Simultaneous and successive synthesis: An alternative model for cognitive abilities.

Abstract

Current theories of the structure of cognitive abilities are critically examined and found to lack adequate description of the processes underlying the abilities. An alternative model, Luria's theory of simultaneous and successive syntheses, is presented and discussed. This model of information processing is supported by a number of factor analytic studies of cognitive abilities and then related to data from studies of memory, imagery, and language. Finally, a model of abilities in terms of a structure-process distinction is proposed. Ever since intelligence tests were devised, the concept of ability has been advanced as something underlying behavior. Often interchangeable with capacity, intellectual ability has been described as a general factor akin to mental energy (Spearman, 1927), the complexity and flexibility of a person's schemata (Vernon, 1960), a hierachy of reasoning and memory (Burt, 1972; Jensen, 1970), or the ability to meet new situations with old responses. Recently, there seems to be a shift from the postulation and study of abilities to an inquiry into processes (Messick, 1973). One of the apparent advantages of considering processes is their proximity to behavior or performance, describing modes of an individual's functioning in a test situation; it is easier and more meaningful to integrate the interplay between genetic endowments and the historical nature of an individual's experience with the characteristics of the task itself, as determinants of the processes used by an individual, rather than invoke the notion of abilities. Encouragement in viewing cognitive functions in terms of processes also comes from those who oppose faculty psychology. As based on factor analytic work, abilities often emerge as mental faculties, permanent and immutable, and dissociated from behavior. Humphreys (1962a, 1962b), for instance, reacts unfavorably to such a view by listing