Specific Relationship Between Working Memory Capacity, Central Executive Function, Reasoning And The Score Of The College Entrance Examination

This paper explores the relation between working memory capacity (WMC), the three sub-components of executive function (EF), reasoning ability and academic achievements of college students. During this research, 320 healthy college students are required to perform six tasks involving two working memory span, three sub-components of executive function tests and raven's test. Based on the data and the subjects' academic achievements, nonparametric test and correlation regression analysis are conducted. The study arrives at the following conclusions:Firstly, there is significant negative correlation between two working memory span (DWMS) and updating capacity. Working memory spans show a strong positive correlation with reasoning ability, and the degree of correlation between visuo-spatial working memory span and reasoning is higher than the relationship between digit working memory span (DWMS) and reasoning. In three sub-components of executive function, inhibition of prepotent responses (inhibition) does no obviously correlate with attention switching (switching), but letter memory task(updating) and inhibition, updating and switching correlate significantly with each other.Secondly, there is obvious difference between arts students and science students in their visuo-spatial working memory span (VSWMS) and updating capacity. On VSWMS, science students' scores are higher than arts', but on the updating capacity, vice versa.Thirdly, as for the relationship between WMC and academic achievements, there is significant correlation between DWMS and Chinese scores of arts students, or English scores of science students. For the relationship of the three sub-components of executive function and academic achievements, the research can not find correlation between executive function and science subject, but it is found that the correlation between updating capacity and arts subjects' is large. In the case of reasoning ability, there is obvious correlation between it and mathematics, English, total score of arts students', Chinese scores of science students' are too. Further regression analysis show that those correlated significantly with academic achievements' tests are all entered the regression equation and is found to be able to predict academic achievements...