ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2018
Measuring and understanding individual differences in cognition.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 101 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
101 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- How does cognition determine an individual's fitness? A systematic review of the links between cognition, behaviour and fitness in non-human animals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Pooled it
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- Smart Ungulates: What Sheep and Goats' Performances in a Reversed-Reward Contingency Task Tell Us About the Evolution of Cognitive Flexibility.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
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- On Benchmarking Human-like Intelligence in Machines.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
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- Three distinct components of pragmatic language use: Social conventions, intonation, and world knowledge-based causal reasoning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Embodied Cognition and the Structure of Personality: An Exploratory Study of Longitudinal Pathways From Early Psychomotor Function.Journal of personality · 2025Article
- Social Interactions Are Related to Cognitive Development in Western Australian Magpie Fledglings.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Beyond criterion: cognitive flexibility in wild striated caracaras.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Dedifferentiation and Transfer in Executive Function and Math Ability Following a Five-Year Abacus Training in Schoolchildren.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Influences of Diet Quality, Nursery-Habitat Complexity and Sex on Brain Development and Cognitive Performance of Brown Trout (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- The coevolution of cognition and sociality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- The evolutionary puzzle of cognition: challenges and insights from individual-based studies.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Bold zebrafish (Danio rerio) learn faster in a classical associative learning task.Scientific reports · 2025Article
41 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Individuals vary in their cognitive performance. While this variation forms the foundation of the study of human psychometrics, its broader importance is only recently being recognized. Explicitly acknowledging this individual variation found in both humans and non-human animals provides a novel opportunity to understand the mechanisms, development and evolution of cognition. The papers in this special issue highlight the growing emphasis on individual cognitive differences from fields as diverse as neurobiology, experimental psychology and evolutionary biology. Here, we synthesize this body of work. We consider the distinct challenges in quantifying individual differences in cognition and provide concrete methodological recommendations. In particular, future studies would benefit from using multiple task variants to ensure they target specific, clearly defined cognitive traits and from conducting repeated testing to assess individual consistency. We then consider how neural, genetic, developmental and behavioural factors may generate individual differences in cognition. Finally, we discuss the potential fitness consequences of individual cognitive variation and place these into an evolutionary framework with testable hypotheses. We intend for this special issue to stimulate researchers to position individual variation at the centre of the cognitive sciences.This article is part of the theme issue 'Causes and consequences of individual differences in cognitive abilities'.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.