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Processing Speed, Working Memory, and Fluid Intelligence: Evidence for a Developmental Cascade
Astrid F. Fry and Sandra Hale
Psychological Science 1996 7: 237
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00366.x

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 PSYCtIOLOGIChL SCIENCE
Research Report
PROCESSING SPEED, WORKING MEMORY, AND
FLUID INTELLIGENCE:
Evidence for a Developmental Cascade
Astrid F. Fry and Sandra Hale
Wrishirigtori Urii\*ersity
As children mature, they can process information faster
(Cerella & Hale, 1993; Kail, 1991), hold more items in working
memory (Denipster, 1981; Gathercole 6t Baddeley, l993), and
perform better on tests of fluid intelligence (Court 6t Raven,
1982). The co-occurrence of these changes raises the question
of the nature of the relationship among them. Carpenter, Just,
and Shell (1990) have argued that working memory is a critical
determinant of performance on tests of fluid intelligence such as
the Standard Raven's Progressive hlatrices. Their theory of
analytical intelligence suggests that agc-related increases in
working memory might contribute to the improvement in chil-
dren's fluid intelligence as they mature. Recently, Kail (1992;
Kail & Park, 1993) has argued that faster information process-
ing underlies the well-documented increases in memory span
with age. Thus, much of cognitive development may represent
a cascade wherein age-related changes in processing speed lead
to changes in working memory that, in turn, lead to changes in
performance on tests of fluid intelligence (Kail & Salthouse,
1993).
Recent evidence concerning the general nature of age differ-
ences in processing speed appears to strengthen the likelihood
that a cascade model describes cognitive development. Given
that a test like the Standard Raven's Progressive hlatrices is
believed to measure a very general ability (Carpenter et al.,
1990; Snow, Kyllonen. & hlarshalek, 19841, test performance
should be significantly affected by increases in processing
speed only if speed also represents a very general ability. That
is, an improvement in speed on a single information processing
task would have only minimal consequences for an untimed test
of general fluid intelligence unless improvement on this task
were highly correlated with improvements on a wide variety of
Address correspondence to Astrid F. Fry, Department of Psychol-
ogy, Washington University, Campus Uox 1125. One Urookings Dr.,
St. Louis, hlO 63130; e-mail: sshale~artsci.wustI.edu.
VOI,. 7. NO. 4, JULY 1996
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other processing tasks. Rqcent findings from multitask experi-
ments suggest that performances on many different speeded
tasks improve in concert during childhood (Hale, 1990; Hale,
Fry, &Jessie, 1993; Kail &Park, 1992). hloreover, the speed of
information processing on different tasks remains highly eorre-
lated in young adults (Hale & Jansen, 1993; Vernon, 1983).
Thcse results are consistent with a global trend in the develop-
ment of processing speed. Because of the relationship between
processing speed and working memory, this global trend might
influence the development of working memory for many diffcr-
ent kinds of information, thereby affecting performance on fluid
intelligence tests.
Alternatively, it is possible that the causal relation is re-
versed from that just described. That is, age-related changes in
fluid abilities other than processing speed, such as the ability to
see patterns and relationships, might be responsible for faster
performance on information processing tasks (Anderson, 1992).
Thus, developmental changes in speed could be either the cause
or the consequence of changes in fluid intelligence. Although
previous studies have examined the causal relation between
age-related changes in processing speed and memory (Kail,
1991; Kail & Park, 1991), no previous developmental study has
examined the causal relations among all four variables of cur-
rent interest, that is, age, processing speed, working memory,
and fluid intelligence.
The present study was designed specifically to determine
whether there is a developmental cascade in which children's
information processing becomes faster, leading to improvc-
ments in working memory, and improved working memory, in
turn, leads to increases in fluid intelligence. In addition, we
tested the alternative hypothesis that changes in fluid intelli-
gence drive changes in speed. These hypotheses were evaluated
using path analytic methods that also provided information on
the determinants of individual differences in cognitive perfor-
mance when age-related differences were statistically con-
trolled.
hlETHOD
Participants were students at local private schools in the St.
Louis metropolitan area and undergraduates at Washington
University in s t . Louis. The sample of 214 participants (96 fe-
males and 118 males, ages 7 to 19 years) consisted of 20 second
graders, 20 third graders, 40 fourth graders, 36 fifth graders, 32
sixth graders, 17 seventh graders, and 49 young adults (high
school seniors and 1st- and 2nd-year college students).
Processing speed, working memory, and fluid intelligence
were assessed using computerized tasks. All software was writ-
ten in Turbo Pascal by the authors and included timing and
display routines provided by PCX Toolkit, by Genus.
Copyright 0 1996 American Psychological Society 237
 PSYCIlOLOGlCAL SCIENCE
Spced and Mcmory Mediate Cognitivc Dcvclopmcnt
Processing speed was measured using four quite different
information processing tasks that were selected from those used
in a previous study (Hale & Jansen, 1993). That study demon-
strated that an individual's speed on these tasks is relatively
independent of which task is considered; that is, a given indi-
vidual is approximately the same percentagc faster (or slower)
than average on all of the tasks. Thus, the four tasks provide
separate assessments of the global processing-speed construct.
The four speeded tasks were (a) disjunctive reaction time
(two vertical arrows pointed in the same or different directions),
requiring a same/different judgment (two conditions); (b) shape
classification (two simple geometric forms whose shapes were
either the same or different and whose sizes were either the
same or different), requiring a same/different shape judgment
(four conditions based on crossing shape with size); (c) visual
search (green squarcs and red circles served as distractors and
half the trials included a red square target; total number of items
was either 9 or 25). requiring a target presentlabsent judgment
(four conditions based on crossing set size with target pres-
ence); and (d) abstract matching-to-sample (three patterns that
could vary along four dimensions-shape, color, number, and
orientation), requiring a judgment as to which of two upper
patterns best matched the lower pattern (four conditions based
on the number of irrelevant dimensions held constant across all
three patterns). For each participant, a single speed index was
calculated by first taking the individual's response time (K?')in
each of the 14 conditions and dividing it by thc mean RT for the
young-adult group in that condition, and then averaging the 14
ratios to obtain a mean RT ratio.
Working memory was assessed using four different tasks
that tested memory for two different types of items (digits and
spatial locations), each with two levels of concurrent processing
requirements. For the digit memory tasks, participants viewed
a series of digits, then recalled the digits aloud in the order of
presentation to the best of their ability. For the location mem-
ory tasks, participants saw a series of grids, each with an X in
a different location, then indicated the locations they recalled
by marking directly on the screen with a felt-tip pen.
In the digit and location memory tasks with minimal concur-
rent processing requirements, participants simply had to main-
tain old items in storage while encoding new items. In the tasks
with increased concurrent processing requirements, partici-
pants also had to report the colors of items while maintaining
their identities (digits) or locations ( X s ) in working memory.
Previous research in our laboratory has shown that, depending
on the nature of the report response, the processing required to
report colors can interfere selectively with verbal or spatial
memory (Hale, Myerson, Rhee, Weiss, & Abrams, 1996). For
the digit memory task, participants named the color of each
digit as it appeared in the series. For the location memory task,
participants indicated the color of the X by pointing to a match-
ing color in a palette presented to the right of the grid. For each
participant, the maximum number of items that could be main-
tained in working memory was determined for each of the four
tasks. and a general working memory index was calculated as
the mean of the four span measures.
Fluid intelligence was assessed using an untimed test, the
Standard Raven's Progressive Matrices (Court & Ravens,
1982). In order to maintain the video-game-like quality of the
238
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overall procedure, we presented test items on the video moni-
tor. For each participant, the raw score (number correct) was
used as the measure of fluid intelligence. (Note that the scores
were not converted to percentiles because such a conversion,
although useful in estimating IQ. would mask the impact of
development on fluid intelligence.)
RESULTS
'
".
Thc intercorrelations between individual participants' mean
RTs for the four processing-speed tasks ranged from .73 to 3 8 ,
and were highest between the two tasks that produced the
shortest RTs (ix., disjunctive choice reaction time and shape
classification, r = .88) and between the two tasks that produced
RTs of intermediate length (i.e., shape classification and visual
search, r = .88). The intercorrelations between individual par-
ticipants' four memory span measures ranged from .44 to .61,
and were highest between the two measures of working mem-
ory for the same type of item (ix., memory for digits with and
without interference, r = .61, and memory for locations with
and without interference, r = .60).
The developmental trend in processing speed was very sim-
ilar to that reported by Kail (1991). having the form of an ex-
ponential decay in the ratio of child to young-adult RTs (see
Fig. I ; an age window of 8 months was used so as to maximize
the number of data points while maintaining a minimum of 7
individuals per age group). The speed index is comparable to
the slope of the relation between child and adult R l s used by
Kail (1991) and us (Hale, 1990; Hale et al., 1993) as both indi-
cate how many times longer a child's RTs are than those of the
average young adult. In subsequent analyses, however, the log-
arithm of the speed index was used in order to decrease skew
and heterogeneity of variance between age groups. With the
transformed speed index, strong correlations were observed
I I 1 I I I I I 1 1 1
1
L
\ I
RT Ratio = 10.24*e
R'=.966
-.259 * Age
+' 1
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22
Age (years)
Fig. 1. Mean response time ( K l ) ratio plotted as a function of
age. The open circles represent the means calculated for 13
groups created by subdividing the sample on the basis of age
into bins of 8 months each. The solid line is the best-fitting
exponential decay function (Equation 6 in Kail, 1991).
VOL. 7. NO. 4, JULY 1996
 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Astrid F. F r y and S a n d r a Halc

imong speed, memory, and fluid intelligence, and all three of

: h e x measures were strongly correlated with age (absolute val-
jes of all rs > .60; Table I).
We conducted path analyses using Bentler's Structural +.376
Equations Program (Bentler, 1989) in order t o examine possible Raven's
:ausal relations among age, speed, memory, and fluid intelli-
zence. The first path analysis tested two hypotheses: (a) that
age-related improvements in performance on the Raven's are
mediated by changes in working memory capacity and (b) that
when age-related differences in working memory and Raven's
performance are statistically controlled, working memory ca-
pacity is still a significant determinant of fluid intelligcncc. The
results of this analysis are presented in the top panel of Figure
2; the number next to each path from a causal variable to a
dependent variable is the standardized path coefficient and rep-
resents the change in the dependent variable, in standard devi-
ation units, expected to result from a change of one standard
deviation in the causal variable, if other possible determinants
specified in the model were held constant. The solid lines rep-
resent statistically significant paths, and the dotted lines repre-
sent paths that failed to pass the Wald test for inclusion in the
model being tested. Although there is a significant direct path
between age and Raven's performance, the developmental in-
crease in working memory capacity mediates much of the rela-
tionship between age and fluid intelligence. That is, decompo-
sition revealed that 41% of the total age-related effect on fluid +.346
intelligence is mediated by age-related differences in working
memory. Notably, even with age-related differences in working
memory and fluid intelligence statistically controlled, there was
still a significant effect of working memory on Raven's perfor-
mance.
The second path analysis tested three hypotheses: (a) that
age-related improvements in working memory mediate the re-
lationship between age differences in speed and fluid intelli-
gence; (b) that when age-related differenccs in speed, working
memory, and fluid intelligence are statistically controlled, indi-
vidual differences in working memory mediate the relationship
between speed and Raven's performance; and (c) that when
age-related differences are statistically controlled, individual
Fig. 2. Schematic representations of the three models with
differences in speed are a significant determinant of working
standardized path coefficients. Arrows represent the direction
memory capacity. The results of this analysis are shown in the of causality tested; solid and dotted lines represent paths that
middle panel of Figure 2. Although age has significant direct were significant and not significant, respectively.
effects on both working memory and Raven's performance, de-
composition revealed that 71% of the total age-related effect on
working memory capacity is mediated by age differences in and working memory. The coefficient for the causal path from
processing speed, and 45% of the total age-related effect on speed to Raven's performance is not statistically significant,
fluid intelligence is mediated by age-related differences in speed indicating that speed has no direct effect on fluid intelligence. In

Table 1. Iiitercorrelntiotis beticveii oge, speed, iiieiiiory, clridjhid

intelligence

Processing Working Raven's

Age speed memory raw score

Age - - .819 + .651 + .633

Processing speed - - .706 - .607
Working memory - + .639
Raven's raw score -

VOL. 7, NO. 4, JULY 1996 239

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 PSYCHOI-OGICAL SCIENCE

Speed a n d Memory Mediate Cognitive Development

contrast, individual diffcrcnces in speed do have an effect on

working memory capacity, even when age-related differences
are statistically controlled. hioreover, there is still a significant
effect of working memory on Raven’s performance when speed
and age are both statistically controlled.
The third and final path analysis tested the alternative hy-
pothesis that age-related changes in fluid abilities other than
processing speed account for age-related decreases in Kls. As
the bottom panel of Figure 2 shows. there is a weak but signif-
icant direct path from Kaven’s performance to processing
speed. In contrast, the direct relationship between age and
speed is very strong, and decomposition revealed that it ac-
counts for more than 91% of the total age-related effect on
processing speed.
The finding that the direct relationship between age and
speed is minimally affected by either individual differences or
age-related differences in fluid intelligence was further cxam-
ined in the following manner. Because of the extensive range in
Raven’s performance within each age group, it was possible to
create groups matched on raw scores. Children from adjacent
grade levels (second and third graders, fourth and fifth graders,
sixth and seventh graders) were pooled in order to maximize the
size of the matched groups. Then, three groups of children and
a group of young adults were selected, with 18 individuals in Fig. 3. Mean response times (RTs) for Raven’s-matched groups
each group. The participants selected for these groups were all of children as a function of a matched adult group’s mean RTs.
closely matched on the Standard Raven’s Progressive hfatrices Each data point indicates the relation between the performance
(see Table 2). Despite the fact that matching participants of of a specific child group in a particular task condition and the
different ages on their Raven’s raw scores necessarily meant performance of the young-adult group in that condition. That is,
the y-coordinate for a data point is the mean Kl of the child
that IQ was negatively correlated with age. the children’s
group, and the x-coordinate is the mean K l of the young-adult
groups had longer KTs than the young-adult group on every group. The dotted line indicates where the data would fall if the
task. As can be seen in Figure 3, even under these circum- performance of a child group and thc adult group were equiv-
stances, there were clear age differences in processing speed, alent. Solid lines represent the best-fitting linear functions fit for
and these differences in speed were global, with similar effects each age group separately. Parameter values for each of the
on performance of diverse tasks, both simple and complex. three functions and fit statistics arc provided in Table 3.
That is, for each age group, the ratio of child RTs to adult Kl‘s
was approximately constant across tasks and conditions, as in-
results replicate and extend Kail’s (1991; Kail & Park, 1994)
dicated by the fact that the data were well described by simple recent findings in developmental studies concerning speed and
linear functions with intercepts close to zero (see Table 3). working memory and are consistent with Kail and Salthouse’s
Moreover, the slopes of these regression functions decreased (1993) previously untested model of the relations among age,
systematically as the age of the child group increased. speed, working memory, and fluid intelligence during develop-
ment.
DISCUSSION The present findings also provide support for the theory of
analytical (fluid) intelligence proposed by Carpenter et al.
The findings of the present study reveal that age-related (1990) and extend their findings with respect to adults to indi-
changes in processing speed mediate most of the developmental vidual differences in fluid intelligence in children and adoles-
increases in working memory capacity. hloreover, age-related cents. Consistent with their theory, there was a direct causal
increases in speed and working memory account for nearly half relation between working memory capacity and the perfor-
of the total age-related effect on fluid intelligence. The present mance of individual children, adolescents, and young adults on

Table 2. Metitis, storidcird cleviatioris, (itid rtitigrs of

Table 3. Regressioti pcirtittieters c i r i d f i t stlitistics for tiic
Hnveti’s raw scores for the nintclied groitps
clnta siiowri iri Figitre 3
Group hfean SU Range
Group Slope Intercept 2
Second and third graders 40.61 5.42 31 4 8
Fourth and fifth graders 38.12 4.99 3047 Second and third graders 2.13 - .I32 .98
Sixth and seventh graders 38.22 5.59 3048 Fourth and fifth graders I .63 - .056 .w
Adults 40. I 1 5.83 3W8 Sixth and seventh graders I .40 - .032 .99

240 VOL. 7, NO. 4, JULY 1996

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 PSYCIIOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Standard Raven's Progressive Matrices even when age-related
differences in processing speed, working memory, and fluid
intelligence were all statistically controlled. This theory sug-
gests two possible interpretations of the direct effect of age on
Raven's performance. In addition to individual and age differ-
ences in the capacity of working memory, there are differences
in the skill with which people manage multiple problem-solving
goals in working memory. This skill may be taught (Lawson &
Kirby. 1981), and therefore likely improves with age and expe-
rience. There are also differences in the ability to induce ab-
stract relations, an ability that Carpenter et al. (1990) suggested
is especially important for solving relatively difficult matrix
problems. Age and experience (including formal education)
may result in greater abstraction ability as well BS in better goal
management, and either or both may contribute strongly to the
direct path from age to Raven's perforniance observed in the
present study.
Finally, the present findings reveal a strong connection be-
tween individual differences in processing speed and working
memory. This connection is consistent with the results of pre-
vious studies (hliller & Vernon, 1992) and appears to parallel
the observed connection between age-related differences in
speed and working memory. However, the nature of the mech-
anism (or mechanisms) underlying these connections is not yet
completely understood, especially with respect to processing
and maintaining nonlexical information. With respect to lexical
information, Kail (1992; Kail & Park, 1993) has shown that
processing-speed differences lead to differences in articulation
rate that, in keeping with Baddeley's (1992) model of working
memory, are significant determinants of digit and letter span in
children and adults. However, overt articulation rate can only
be a proxy for the speed of covert rehearsal. This point is un-
derscored by the finding that children with a form of cerebral
palsy that is associated with very slow speech rates have meni-
ory spans equivalent to those of children in an age-matched
control group (White, Craft, Hale, & Park, 1994), suggesting
that children can develop normal rates of covert rehearsal even
if their overt speech is impaired.
The present study combines both method and theory from
the areas of experimental and developmental psychology as
well as from psychometrics in order to examine the sources of
age and individual differences in cognitive function. 'The results
of path analyses provide evidence of a developmental cascade
in which increases in processing speed result in improvements
in working memory that, in turn, contribute to improvements in
fluid intelligence. In addition, statistically controlling for age-
related differences revealed that a similar cascade affects indi-
vidual differences in cognition: Differences in speed have a di-
rect effect on working memory capacity, and these individual
differences in memory are a direct determinant of fluid intelli-
gence. Clearly, both developmental and individual differences
in speed and working memory play important roles in higher
cognitive abilities; however. a more detailed account of how
both lexical and nonlexical information are maintained in (and
lost from) working memory will be needed before the way in
VOL.7, NO. 4, JULY 1916
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Astrid F. Fry a n d Sandra Hale
which processing-speed differences initiate these cascades can
be understood.
Acknowledgments-The data presented here were collected as part
of a study conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a
doctoral degree by the first author. A preliminary report was pre-
sented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society. Novembe'r 1994,
in SI. Louis. We wish lo thank Joel hlyerson for his helpful com-
' ments at all stages of this project and Beth Oberlander. Jamie
hlichael, Jill Raney. and Karen Topping for their assistance with
data collection and stimulus preparation. In addition, we are in-
debted to the students, teachSrs, and administrators at the following
St. Louis area schools: Bishop 'DuBourg High School, St. Joan of
Arc Elementary School, St. hlary hlagdalene Elementary School,
and lmmacolata Elementary School.
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