SynthesisPsychological bulletin2024
The stability of cognitive abilities: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies.
Synthesis in Psychological bulletin, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 2 of them syntheses 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
31 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Stability and Change of Bullying Behavior in Children and Adolescents: A Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies.Journal of youth and adolescence · 2026Pooled it
- Impact of physical activity on children's cognitive function and its educational applications: a narrative literature review.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Pooled it
- Trial
- Trial
- Personality trait and state associations with cognitive functioning and variability in middle-aged and older adults.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Article
- Cognitive heterogeneity, health dynamics, and subjective well-being across adulthood: evidence from the German SOEP longitudinal panel.BMC public health · 2026Article
- The effect of avatar identity on level-2 visual perspective taking in individuals with schizophrenia.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Working Memory Impairment Induced by Chemotherapy-A Narrative Review.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Fetal size, gestational age, and cognitive performance at 5 years in term-born children: Four national cohorts' study.International journal of gynaecology and obstetrics: the official organ of the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics · 2026Article
- Socioeconomic Differences in Cognitive Ability Across Childhood and Adolescence: An Investigation of Genetic, Individual, and Environmental Factors.Journal of Intelligence · 2026Article
- Quantile Regression of Cognitive Ability and Achievement Inequality Before and After the Pandemic in One State.Journal of Intelligence · 2026Article
- Stability of Music Engagement Across Childhood, Adolescence, and Established Adulthood: A Longitudinal Twin and Adoption Study.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Subjective Cognitive Decline in Brazilian Adults: Prevalence and Associated Social, Lifestyle, and Health-Related Factors: A Nationally Representative Cross-Sectional Analysis from the ELSI-Brazil Cohort.Neurology international · 2026Article
- Changes in cognitive performance following repeated exposure to a hand-touch learning task across breed clades of domestic dogs (Canis familiaris).Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Cognitive dispersion in established adulthood: etiology and implications for cognitive aging.Innovation in aging · 2026Article
- Stability of childhood maltreatment self-reports: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Nature. Mental health · 2026Article
- Effect sizes of APOE e4 on the same general cognitive ability test taken by the same people from age 11 to age 90: The Lothian Birth Cohorts 1921 and 1936.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Review
- The relationship between restrained eating and physical activity among female university students: a cross-lagged study.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Charting the cognitive development of children using adult 'polygenic g scores'.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Cognitive abilities, including general intelligence and domain-specific abilities such as fluid reasoning, comprehension knowledge, working memory capacity, and processing speed, are regarded as some of the most stable psychological traits, yet there exist no large-scale systematic efforts to document the specific patterns by which their rank-order stability changes over age and time interval, or how their stability differs across abilities, tests, and populations. Determining the conditions under which cognitive abilities exhibit high or low degrees of stability is critical not just to theory development but to applied contexts in which cognitive assessments guide decisions regarding treatment and intervention decisions with lasting consequences for individuals. In order to supplement this important area of research, we present a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies investigating the stability of cognitive abilities. The meta-analysis relied on data from 205 longitudinal studies that involved a total of 87,408 participants, resulting in 1,288 test-retest correlation coefficients among manifest variables. For an age of 20 years and a test-retest interval of 5 years, we found a mean rank-order stability of ρ = .76. The effect of mean sample age on stability was best described by a negative exponential function, with low stability in preschool children, rapid increases in stability in childhood, and consistently high stability from late adolescence to late adulthood. This same functional form continued to best describe age trends in stability after adjusting for test reliability. Stability declined with increasing test-retest interval. This decrease flattened out from an interval of approximately 5 years onward. According to the age and interval moderation models, minimum stability sufficient for individual-level diagnostic decisions (
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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.