Open research questions in Cognitive Abilities and Testing

What the literature leaves open

• limited by the scope of previous meta-analyses - focused on the relations between EF components and a limited number of specific candidate genetic variants - lack of comprehensive quantitative meta-analysis

  Genetic Variants Associated with Executive Function in Children and Adolescents: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis · 2026 · DOI

• The lack of a comprehensive quantitative meta-analysis to quantify the gene-EF association. Prior studies have limitations, such as focusing on specific candidate genetic variants. The field lacks a comprehensive view of genetic variants associated with executive function.

  Genetic Variants Associated with Executive Function in Children and Adolescents: A Three-Level Meta-Analysis · 2026 · DOI

• The gap in prior work is the limited understanding of the gene-by-environment interplay between income inequality and depressive symptoms. The paper identifies the need for a large-scale analysis of this association. The study aims to fill this gap by examining the interaction between genetic influences and income inequality.

  The long reach of childhood income inequality: a multinational twin study of gene–environment interplay on adult depressive symptoms · 2026 · DOI

• The study notes that further separating states within the 'Other' group according to the order of the parental partner was not feasible due to the heterogeneity and rarity of specific sibling constellations within this group. The study also notes that estimating sibling complexity based on siblings registered to reside in the same household was less common than when estimated using all siblings.

  Sibling Complexity Across Childhood: A 16‐Year Follow‐up of the 1988 and 2000 Birth Cohorts in Finland · 2026 · DOI

• Further study on the causes and consequences of evolving sibling experiences, - Investigation into the effects of sibling complexity on child development and well-being

  Sibling Complexity Across Childhood: A 16‐Year Follow‐up of the 1988 and 2000 Birth Cohorts in Finland · 2026 · DOI

• The study faces the challenge of modeling the complex pattern of genetic influences across the lifespan. The study must address the issue of non-normality and missing data in the analysis. The study needs to account for the effects of sex on the mean of each variable.

  The impact of genes and environment assessed longitudinally on psychological and somatic distress in twins from ages 15 to 35 years · 2025 · DOI

• Previous research has not exhaustively explored alternative theoretical explanations for the observed patterns in distress symptoms over time. There is a need to examine a younger sample of twins to extend the findings of previous research.

  The impact of genes and environment assessed longitudinally on psychological and somatic distress in twins from ages 15 to 35 years · 2025 · DOI

• The study required the identification of maternal half-sibling pairs reared together whose biological fathers were discordant for the diagnoses of PTSD, MD, AUD, and DUD. The study needed to control for various factors, including birth years of offspring and father, and sex of the child.

  What is the role of paternal genetic transmission on risk for PTSD and internalizing and externalizing disorders? · 2025 · DOI

• The impact of PTSD and related comorbidities necessitates efforts to understand its etiology. Prior studies have shown that PTSD is influenced by genetic risk within the same generation, but the role of paternal genetic transmission is not well understood.

  What is the role of paternal genetic transmission on risk for PTSD and internalizing and externalizing disorders? · 2025 · DOI

• The extent to which the association between educational attainment and mental health outcomes is influenced by genetic nurture and demographic factors is unknown. Prior work has not fully examined the relationship between educational attainment and mental health outcomes using a within-sibship Mendelian randomization approach.

  Educational attainment and mental health outcomes: A within-sibship Mendelian randomization study · 2025 · DOI

• There is a need to investigate the influence of genetic and environmental factors on wellbeing over time. The current study aims to fill this gap by examining the phenotypic stability of wellbeing and continuity and change in genetic and environmental influences. The research gap includes understanding the stability and change of wellbeing across the lifespan.

  The stability and change of wellbeing across the lifespan: a longitudinal twin-sibling study · 2024 · DOI

• The study only rarely addresses the role of genetics in the social scientific literature on depression, - The fact that mental health outcomes are influenced by both environmental and genetic factors remains largely unaddressed, - The study does not provide a comprehensive analysis of the genetic and environmental factors that influence mental health trajectories

  Do Genetics Shape Mental Health Trajectories Around Partnership Transitions? · 2024 · DOI

• Investigate the role of genetics in shaping mental health trajectories around partnership transitions, - Examine the interaction between genetic and environmental factors that influence mental health outcomes, - Explore the potential applications of genetic research in the development of personalized interventions for mental health

  Do Genetics Shape Mental Health Trajectories Around Partnership Transitions? · 2024 · DOI

• further research is needed to establish the nature of the relationship between a society's overall wealth and the resources available to buffer against inequality, - studies should investigate the effects of income inequality on other health outcomes, - research should examine the impact of income inequality on genetic influences in other contexts

  The long reach of childhood income inequality: a multinational twin study of gene–environment interplay on adult depressive symptoms · 2026 · DOI

• Further research is needed to distinguish where in the sequence genetic associations are expressed, - Research should investigate how institutional sorting shapes genetic associations, - Studies should explore the genetic correlations between educational attainment and other traits

  Beyond years of schooling: Genetic associations across educational milestones in two Norwegian cohorts · 2026 · DOI

• Here, information-processing capability is limited by the storage capacity available to hold representations, and the degree of control over those representations.

  Cognitive capacity and control in the evolution of intelligence · 2026 · DOI

• The controversial factor structure of the WISC-IV necessitates further validation, and our findings should be replicated through systematically controlled sample studies.

  Examining the psychometric properties of the WISC-IV in low and normal IQ samples · 2026 · DOI

• The results emphasize the role of shared genetic influences in shaping both personality and executive abilities, suggesting that future research should investigate the underlying neural mechanisms driving these associations.

  Small pieces make the big picture: the etiology of the relationship between executive functions and personality traits · 2025 · DOI

• However, intervention studies report mixed findings regarding the causal far-transfer effects to academic skills, such as literacy and mathematics.

  A comparison of three executive function interventions on direct and far transfer in Chilean school children: a cluster-randomized controlled protocol · 2025 · DOI

• Pediatric obesity rates have quadrupled in the United States, and deficits in higher-order cognition have been linked to obesity, though it remains poorly understood how deviations from normal body mass are related to the neural dynamics serving cognition in youth.

  Interplay between preclinical indices of obesity and neural signatures of fluid intelligence in youth · 2024 · DOI

• These findings should be considered when designing cognitive training programs for athletes, and future research could explore the optimal duration of such programs.

  Improvements in executive functions by domain-specific cognitive training in youth elite soccer players · 2024 · DOI

• Despite this being widely reported, the mechanisms underlying the association between socioeconomic disadvantage and educational attainment are not well understood.

  Do executive functions and processing speed mediate the relationship between socioeconomic status and educational achievement? Analysis of an observational birth cohort study · 2024 · DOI

• There is a lack of research on the Flynn effect in older adults. Prior studies have focused on younger populations, leaving a gap in our understanding of the phenomenon in later adulthood.

  Executive Function Flynn Effect Are Independent of Psychometric ⁠g in Aging Populations Across Europe (2005-2022) · 2026 · DOI

• In the present analyses, we applied a forced single factor extraction to estimate the positive manifold, modeling shared variance across the available cognitive tasks. However, the interpretation of this extracted general factor critically depends on the breadth and content of the cognitive indicators included (Johnson et al., 2004, 2008). Psychometric g, as traditionally conceptualized, is derived from a broad range of higher order cognitive abilities, whereas the present g factor likely reflects an executive function-specific construct given the domain composition of the SHARE battery (Johnson et al., 2008). Consequently, our results reflect longitudinal trends in executive functions rather than general intelligence per se. Second, measurement invariance analyses could only be performed for one of the five cognitive tasks (numeracy II, see Table 7), due to subscale measurement properties. This raises concerns about the meaningfulness of the observed test score changes in the remaining four domains and in particular when it comes to verbal fluency. However, the non-verbal subscales of our cognitive functioning assessments should be largely unaffected from measurement non-invariance-related problems. Third, some of the decadal IQ (DIQ) estimates derived in this study appear implausibly large and warrant careful interpretation. Because DIQs are standardized based on the length of time intervals between samples, even modest performance differences may yield disproportionately large DIQ values when intervals are brief. Thus, high DIQ estimates may exaggerate the magnitude of true cognitive changes, reflecting short-term interval sensitivity rather than substantial cognitive gains or losses. However, changes were for the most part remarkably consistent in terms of sign across countries, thus indicating meaningful evidence for predominantly positive cognitive functioning Flynn effects in our data. Finally, due to our analytical approach, our results rely on refreshment samples added across SHARE waves. However, refreshment sampling was not consistently implemented across all countries or waves, introducing temporal gaps in the available data. For example, Greece, Italy, and Luxembourg provided no new samples after 2015, restricting temporal continuity, while Finland and Latvia joined SHARE only in 2017, thereby limiting the observation period for these countries. Moreover, in the interpretation of cohort differences in older-adult samples methodological challenges specific to aging research have to be accounted for.

  Executive Function Flynn Effect Are Independent of Psychometric ⁠g in Aging Populations Across Europe (2005-2022) · 2026 · DOI

• Environmental confounding. Limited cross-context generalizability. The gap between PGS prediction and twin-based heritability estimates. Measurement error in brief cognitive assessments.

  Interpreting Polygenic Prediction of Cognitive Ability: Evidence for Direct, Reliable, and Portable Genetic Effects · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Cognitive Abilities and Testing

• Executive Functions · Annual Review of Psychology · 2012 · 11,327 citations
• The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. · Psychological Review · 1996 · 4,159 citations
• The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, a meta-analysis, and a preliminary feedback intervention theory. · Psychological Bulletin · 1996 · 3,922 citations
• Testing for competence rather than for "intelligence." · American Psychologist · 1973 · 2,465 citations
• A Developmental Perspective on Executive Function · Child Development · 2010 · 2,061 citations
• Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: A meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables. · Psychological Bulletin · 1995 · 2,023 citations
• Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups · Science · 2010 · 1,912 citations
• Low-Level Environmental Lead Exposure and Children’s Intellectual Function: An International Pooled Analysis · Environmental Health Perspectives · 2005 · 1,816 citations
• Development of the adolescent brain: implications for executive function and social cognition · Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry · 2006 · 1,664 citations
• Individual Differences in Inhibitory Control and Children's Theory of Mind · Child Development · 2001 · 1,411 citations

Most recent work

• Does AI increase cognitive abilities, decrease them, or a little bit of each? And what are its implications for identification and development of the gifted? · Frontiers in Education · 2026
• Task complexity and AI dependency among college students: the mediating roles of cognitive load, future anxiety, and task motivation · BMC Psychology · 2026
• Number of living siblings, social engagement, and cognitive decline among older Mexican adults · Social Science & Medicine · 2026
• Not all twins are identical: the geography of “twin” transition market applications · Applied Geography · 2026
• Outcomes of Varied Activities in Working Memory Training for Children: A Randomized Controlled Trial · Developmental Science · 2026
• Calibrating growth mindset about intelligence: Increased blame, effort misperception, and a genes-and-growth solution for blame. · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2026
• Personality and well-being are genetically associated: Extending previous twin and molecular genetic studies · European Journal of Personality · 2026
• Socioeconomic Status Disparities in Children’s Cognition—Differences in Degree or Kind? · Perspectives on Psychological Science · 2026
• Interpreting Polygenic Prediction of Cognitive Ability: Evidence for Direct, Reliable, and Portable Genetic Effects · Intelligence & Cognitive Abilities · 2026
• Interoceptive Performance is Unrelated to Mental Health Symptoms: Evidence From a Large Scale Multi-Domain Psychophysical Investigation · medRxiv · 2026

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