1 University of Nice, Nice, France.
2 University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
Assessment. 2017 Dec;24(8):987-998. doi: 10.1177/1073191116636449. Epub 2016 Mar 4.
Determining whether Need for Cognition (NC) has the same meaning across age may help understand why there are dramatically different age trends for cognitive abilities and for NC in adulthood. Data from 5,004 participants aged between 18 and 99 years were used to examine both internal relations and external relations of NC. Internal relations were investigated with measures of reliability, examination of factor invariance, and test-retest coefficients across three age groups. External relations were investigated by examining relations of NC with cognitive abilities, engagement, personality, self-rated cognition, and affect. Results suggest that NC may be a broad construct that could reflect motivation to seek out intellectual challenge. In addition, examination of both internal and external relations of NC indicated that the meaning of the construct may be the same across the life span. Finally, the current article showed that the strongest predictor of NC was Openness to Experience, at any age.
确定认知需求（NC）是否在不同年龄段具有相同的含义，可能有助于理解为什么认知能力和成年人的 NC 呈现出截然不同的年龄趋势。本研究使用了来自 18 至 99 岁的 5004 名参与者的数据，以检验 NC 的内部关系和外部关系。内部关系通过可靠性度量、因子不变性检验和三个年龄组的测试-重测系数来研究。外部关系通过考察 NC 与认知能力、参与度、人格、自我认知和情感的关系来研究。结果表明，NC 可能是一个广泛的结构，可以反映寻求智力挑战的动机。此外，对 NC 的内部和外部关系的考察表明，该结构的含义在整个生命周期中可能是相同的。最后，本文表明，无论年龄大小，NC 的最强预测因子是开放性。
