[Are intelligence and executive functions the same thing?].

INTRODUCTION

With the growth of cognitive science, the study of the cognitive components involved in solving tests to assess intelligence become especially significant. From this perspective, the g factor is conceived as the representative of the operation of high-level cognitive processes that control the computational programmes of the brain. Different names have been used to denominate the cognitive processes that underlie the g factor: control processes, executive functioning, executive control or executive functions.

DEVELOPMENT

We review the relationship between intelligence, on the one hand, and working memory and the executive functions construct, on the other. Furthermore, the article also reviews the relationship between intelligence and the prefrontal cortex, as its possible neuroanatomical substrate.

CONCLUSIONS

The studies that were surveyed offer different answers to the question of whether intelligence and the executive functions are one and the same thing, the most widely accepted hypothesis being the one that sees intelligence and the executive functions as overlapping in some aspects but not in others.