Neurocognitive Psychometrics

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Anna-Lena Schubert
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 442137702

The aim of the proposed Scientific Network is to develop reliable and valid measurements of person parameters in working memory and executive functions. Although individual differences in elementary cognitive processes are of great theoretical importance in many research areas, well-known measurement problems limit the integratability and interpretability of previous findings and may lead to underestimation over overestimation of correlations with other variables.The Scientific Network will address these measurement problems from the perspectives of cognitive and biological psychology and psychometrics. The overall aim is to discuss interdisciplinary methods for overcoming the identified measurement problems and to develop innovative approaches for improving the measurement of interindividual differences in elementary cognitive processes. The measurement of cognitive processes will be considered from different disciplinary perspectives brought together in the network. Each of these discipline proposes its own solutions, which can, however, currently not be integrated across disciplines. The interdisciplinary dialogue will therefore discuss how existing paradigms can be modified in order to make individual differences in working memory processes and executive functions reliably and validly measurable. After a discussion of the respective disciplinary perspectives, we will develop specific approaches and discuss possible solutions in an integrative way, which will then be tested empirically. The aim of the proposed network is therefore to develop a research program and to submit grant proposals that allow to address these questions empirically.These submitted research proposals will represent an important step towards the reliable and valid measurement of interindividual differences in working memory and attention processes and thus enrich many research areas such as cognitive psychology, cognitive ageing research, intelligence research, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical psychology. Moreover, the outlined projects will contribute to overcoming the separation of experimental and differential psychology criticized by Cronbach (1957). In addition, the further development of a neurocognitive perspective on the measurement of interindividual differences in working memory and attention processes will allow to evaluate effects of cognitive trainings and interventions with respect to their effects on specific neurocognitive process parameters. Finally, the proposed network also pursues the goal of promoting early career researchers, who will benefit from networking opportunities within the Scientific Network.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Daniel Schneider