The relationship between working memory and intelligence in children: Is the scoring procedure important?

Different procedures have been proposed for scoring working memory (WM) tasks. The Absolute Credit Score (ACS) only considers performance in perfectly recalled trials, while the Partial Credit Score (PCS) considers imperfectly recalled ones too. Research indicates that different relationships between WM and general intelligence (the g-factor) may emerge using the ACS or the PCS. We reanalyzed the ACS and PCS obtained in a sample of 176 children in the 4th and 5th grades, and found that the PCS strengthened the relationship between WM and intelligence, and the relationships between visuospatial short-term memory (STM-VS), active WM and intelligence. When the number of items to be remembered (set size) was considered, however, the PCS only strengthened the relationship between STM-VS, active WM and intelligence in the case of larger set sizes. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.