Can Cognitive Ability be Developed?
The short answer is yes and no. While the brain certainly is plastic, meaning that it can develop and that new connections can be made in the brain thereby increasing its capability, the reality is that this no easy thing to accomplish at all. It takes specialised, targeted, well designed and lengthy interventions together with high motivation, self – discipline and much repetition and drill and practise over a long period of time, to make a significant shift with respect to a person’s cognitive capability. This is the yes part of the answer. The no part is that this is such a financially and time costly process, that it makes much more sense to ensure that a person has the required cognitive capability for a position in the first place.
With that being said, it stands to reason, that since crystalised cognitive ability is “the result” of language proficiency, education, and development, that it can be improved. However, crystalised ability, whilst different to fluid ability, is partly dependent on fluid ability as we have already seen. Person A with a high fluid ability, will likely develop better crystalised abilities than Person B with moderate fluid abilities, assuming they are both subjected to the same developmental opportunities as they grow up.
Within our South African context, it is important then to consider the effect of inequalities in development opportunities, and how this impacts on the development of crystalised abilities amongst disadvantaged groups and how they would perform on psychometric tests of crystalised ability. We could expect a degree of dis-advantage. However, fluid abilities are much less affected by development opportunities and we would not expect differences in measures of fluid ability across advantaged and disadvantaged groups.
For this and other reasons, at EQ – IQ we tend to place more emphasis on fluid than crystalised ability. Not that the latter is unimportant, but due to the fact that if someone has good fluid abilities but “crystalised gaps” and especially gaps in job related skills and knowledge, they have a good chance of closing these gaps when provided with appropriate development opportunities.
Common Misperceptions
Many HR Practitioners hold to the mistaken assumption that there is a specific cognitive test that is targeted for specific jobs. There is a cognitive test for an HR Manager, a different one for a Sales Representative, another for Production Controller, yet another for a Financial Accountant and so on.
This is not the case at all. As a general principle, cognitive tests give us an objective insight into a person’s broad cognitive capability. In a very real sense, the cognitive processes listed in the table shown earlier, are utilised across a range of jobs. So, while specific aptitudes may apply in certain jobs, as has already been explained, it is more useful to understand what a person’s general cognitive capability is.
What is true, is that different personality traits are more relevant to certain jobs than others. This does not mean that there is a specific personality test designed for specific jobs. It simply means that one is looking for different types of profiles within a good personality measure that are relevant for a different type of jobs. We will discuss this in more detail in the next module.