The Worst Performance Rule, or the Not-Best Performance Rule? Latent-Variable Analyses of Working Memory Capacity, Mind-Wandering Propensity, and Reaction Time.

ABSTRACT: The worst performance rule (WPR) is a robust empirical finding reflecting that people's worst task performance shows numerically stronger correlations with cognitive ability than their average or best performance. However, recent meta-analytic work has proposed this be renamed the "not-best performance" rule because mean and worst performance seem to predict cognitive ability to similar degrees, with both predicting ability better than best performance. We re-analyzed data from a previously published latent-variable study to test for worst vs. not-best performance across a variety of reaction time tasks in relation to two cognitive ability constructs: working memory capacity (WMC) and propensity for task-unrelated thought (TUT). Using two methods of assessing worst performance-ranked-binni

SUBMITTER: Welhaf MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7713012 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature