Faster, Smarter, and More Attentive: The Control of Attention is About More Than Just Conflict Resolution

Mental speed theories of intelligence suggest that people are smarter because they are faster. Weargue that attention control plays an important and fundamental role in mediating the relationshipbetween basic sensory processes and more complex cognitive processes such as fluidintelligence. One of the most successful paradigms for establishing a mental speed theory ofintelligence is the inspection time task. In this paper, we examine the mental speed and theattention control perspectives on the inspection time task and its relationship with fluidintelligence. Integrating experimental and correlational approaches, we find that attention controlexplains the inspection time task’s correlation with fluid intelligence and working memorycapacity. Attention control and inspection time are correlated beyond their relationship withother measures of processing speed. Further, while we find no evidence that selective attentionspecifically is related to inspection time performance, both attention control and inspection timepredicted declines in accuracy as participants sustained their attention over time; other measuresof processing speed did not predict sustained attention performance. Collectively, these resultsindicate that inspection time is related to the ability to control attention, especially the ability tosustain attention over time.