General Mental Ability and Two Types of Adaptation

188 Pages·2007·3.48 MB·English

General Mental Ability and Two Types of
Adaptation to Unforeseen Change
Von der Philosophischen Fakult¨at der
Rheinisch-Westf¨alischen Technischen Hochschule Aachen
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktors der Philosophie
genehmigte Dissertation
vorgelegt von
Dipl.-Psych. Jonas W. B. Lang aus Aachen
Berichter: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lutz F. Hornke
Paul D. Bliese, PhD.
Tag der mu¨ndlichen Pru¨fung: 16. Juni 2007
Diese Dissertation ist auf den Internetseiten der Hochschulbibliothek online verfu¨gbar.
Promotionskommission:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Klaus Willmes-von Hinckeldey (Vorsitz)
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lutz F. Hornke
Paul D. Bliese, PhD.
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Iring Koch
To Jessica and Julian

Acknowledgements
I thank Lutz F. Hornke for his ongoing support, mentoring, and teaching over the
threeyearsofmydoctoralstudiesandhisroleasscientificadvisorofthisdissertation.
I thank Paul D. Bliese for answering questions, teaching, and providing deeper
insights on mixed-effects modeling and other data-analytic issues over the last two
years of my doctoral studies.
I thank Verena Buddrus, Tieu Duyen (Soujen) Chung, Johannes Kleikamp, Immo
K¨oster, Jessica Lang, Simon T. K. Lang, Ricarda Schmitz, and Anne Vieten for their
help in collecting and entering data.
Finally, I thank Jessica Lang and Rachel Prayner for helping me to improve the
language of this dissertation.
Aachen, April 2007 Jonas W. B. Lang
I thank Klaus Willmes-von Hinckeldey, Lutz F. Hornke, Paul D. Bliese, and Iring
Koch for serving on my dissertation committee and providing valuable discussions
and comments.
Aachen, June 2007 Jonas W. B. Lang
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Contents
1. Introduction 1
1.1. Adaptation to Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2. Aims of the Present Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. Conceptual and Methodological Section: Defining and Operationalizing
Adaptability to Change 9
2.1. Definitions of Adaptation to Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2. The Task-Change Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3. Conceptual and Methodological Problems in Research on Adaptation
to Change and Recent Methodological Approaches to Deal with Them 16
2.3.1. Issue 1: Separating Adaptive and Non-Adaptive Performance . 16
2.3.2. Issue 2: Considering the Process Nature of Adaptive Perfor-
mance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4. Multilevel Mixed-Effects Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.5. Application of Discontinuous Growth Modeling Techniques to Adapt-
ability Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5.1. Basal Task Performance and Skill Acquisition . . . . . . . . . 24
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2.5.2. Transition Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.5.3. Reacquisition Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.5.4. Illustration and Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6. Brief Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3. Empirical Section: General Mental Ability and the Two Types of Adap-
tation 35
3.1. Theoretical Background: General Mental Ability . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.2. The Relationship Between General Mental Ability and Adaptation:
Theoretical and Empirical Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.3. Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.1. Participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.3.2. Task . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.3.3. General Mental Ability Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3.3.4. Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.3.5. Statistical Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.4. Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4.1. Descriptive Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4.2. Model Building and Model Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.4.3. Hypothesis and Research Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4. Discussion 83
4.1. Transition Adaptation, Reacquisition Adaptation, Skill Acquisition,
and Basal Task Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.1.1. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Contents ix
4.1.2. Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.2. General Mental Ability and Adaptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.2.1. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.2.2. Current Findings and Previous Research . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.2.3. Proposed Framework and Current Findings . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.2.4. Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
4.3. Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.3.1. Generalizability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.3.2. Quadratic Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
5. Summary 99
6. Zusammenfassung 103
References 107
A. Study Variables: Histograms, Normal Probability Plots, and Scatterplot
Matrix 129
B. Discontinuous Mixed-Effects Model: Checks of Model Assumptions 137
C. Expanded Discontinuous Mixed-Effects Model Accounting for Quadratic
Change: Coding of Change Variables, Checks of Model Assumptions,
and Results 155
D. Lebenslauf des Autors 169
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