Department of Psychology, University of Trier.
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin.
Psychol Bull. 2024 Apr;150(4):399-439. doi: 10.1037/bul0000425. Epub 2024 Feb 8.
Cognitive abilities, including general intelligence and domain-specific abilities such as fluid reasoning, comprehension knowledge, working memory capacity, and processing speed, are regarded as some of the most stable psychological traits, yet there exist no large-scale systematic efforts to document the specific patterns by which their rank-order stability changes over age and time interval, or how their stability differs across abilities, tests, and populations. Determining the conditions under which cognitive abilities exhibit high or low degrees of stability is critical not just to theory development but to applied contexts in which cognitive assessments guide decisions regarding treatment and intervention decisions with lasting consequences for individuals. In order to supplement this important area of research, we present a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies investigating the stability of cognitive abilities. The meta-analysis relied on data from 205 longitudinal studies that involved a total of 87,408 participants, resulting in 1,288 test-retest correlation coefficients among manifest variables. For an age of 20 years and a test-retest interval of 5 years, we found a mean rank-order stability of ρ = .76. The effect of mean sample age on stability was best described by a negative exponential function, with low stability in preschool children, rapid increases in stability in childhood, and consistently high stability from late adolescence to late adulthood. This same functional form continued to best describe age trends in stability after adjusting for test reliability. Stability declined with increasing test-retest interval. This decrease flattened out from an interval of approximately 5 years onward. According to the age and interval moderation models, minimum stability sufficient for individual-level diagnostic decisions ( = .80) can only be expected over the age of 7 and for short time intervals in children. In adults, stability levels meeting this criterion are obtained for over 5 years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
认知能力，包括一般智力和领域特定能力，如流体推理、理解知识、工作记忆容量和加工速度，被认为是一些最稳定的心理特征，但还没有大规模的系统努力来记录它们的等级稳定性随年龄和时间间隔变化的具体模式，或者它们在不同能力、测试和人群中的稳定性如何不同。确定认知能力表现出高度或低度稳定性的条件不仅对理论发展至关重要，而且对应用环境也至关重要，在这些环境中，认知评估指导着治疗和干预决策，这些决策对个人有着持久的影响。为了补充这一重要的研究领域，我们对研究认知能力稳定性的纵向研究进行了元分析。元分析依赖于来自 205 项纵向研究的数据，这些研究涉及 87408 名参与者，共产生了 1288 个显变量的测试重测相关系数。对于 20 岁的年龄和 5 年的测试重测间隔，我们发现等级稳定性的平均值 ρ =.76。平均样本年龄对稳定性的影响最好用负指数函数来描述，学龄前儿童的稳定性较低，儿童期的稳定性迅速增加，从青春期晚期到成年晚期的稳定性一直很高。在调整测试可靠性后，同样的函数形式继续最好地描述了稳定性的年龄趋势。稳定性随着测试重测间隔的增加而下降。从大约 5 年的间隔开始，这种下降趋于平稳。根据年龄和间隔调节模型，只有在 7 岁以上和儿童时期的短时间间隔内，才能期望达到足以进行个体水平诊断决策的最小稳定性（=.80）。在成年人中，满足这一标准的稳定水平在 5 年以上就可以获得。（PsycInfo 数据库记录（c）2024 APA，保留所有权利）。
