Strategy use moderates the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence: A combined approach

This study investigated whether the strength of the link between working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence (Gf) differs as people use different strategies to solve Gf problems. A sample of 214 university students completed three complex span tasks measuring WMC and Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) assessing Gf. Strategic behavior was measured by both the strategy questionnaire and the eye-tracking technique. Latent profile analysis yielded three groups of participants using the constructive matching, response elimination, and isolate-and-eliminate strategies, respectively. Participants adopting the constructive matching strategy spent proportionally more time on the matrix area but less time on the response bank, exhibited longer latency to first toggle and higher rate of toggling than those using the eliminative strategies, consistent with the results obtained from the questionnaire data. Furthermore, strategy use moderated the relationship between WMC and APM performance. The link between WMC and APM scores was significantly higher for participants using the eliminative strategies including response elimination (r = .63) and isolate-and-eliminate (r = .54) than that for those using constructive matching (r = .27). Our findings suggest that the extent to which WMC relates to performance on APM varies as a function of strategy use.