A combined experimental/individual differences examination of the influence of motivation on cognitive ability assessments.

The present study examined the influence of motivation on measures of cognitive ability within the domains of attention control, primary memory, secondary memory, and fluid intelligence. Three tasks measuring each respective domain were administered, allowing for latent-variable analyses of the cognitive constructs. Half of participants (n = 322) were assigned to an experimental condition in which they received trial-by-trial and/or block-by-block feedback about their performance in addition to normative information regarding their performance. The other half (n = 322) were assigned to a 'no feedback' condition. The constructs were differentially sensitive to the between-subjects manipulation, with all three attention control tasks showing significantly better performance with feedback, and two of the three secondary memory tasks showing performance improvements with feedback. None of the primary memory or fluid intelligence tasks were affected by feedback. Individual differences in self-reported motivation were only weakly correlated with performance in all four domains. We discuss the implications for these results for the testing of cognitive theories using individual differences, high- versus low-stakes testing, and the role of motivation in cognitive assessment.