The mediating role of working memory structure in the relationship between the executive function components and general intelligence in Saudi adults with intellectual giftedness

BACKGROUND OF YOUR STUDY: Working memory (WM) is a central concept in both psychology and neuroscience. The overall objective of this work is to study whether the passive components of the WM have a mediating role in the relationship between the storage and concurrent processing components and "g". METHODS: Two hundred and sixty individuals participated in this study. They were 140 females (53.8%) and 120 (46.2%). All of them were identified as intellectually gifted. The mean age was 23.2 years old, (SD = 1.34). To investigate how the structure of WM is formed in the current sample, confirmatory factor analyses were performed. To study the mediating role of WM components and their relationship with g, successive path analyses were conducted. The correlation analysis shows that the measures grouped into the proposed factors in the subsequent confirmatory factor analysis exhibit positive and significant associations with each other, of moderate strength. RESULTS: The correlation analysis shows that the working memory measures are mostly positively and significantly related to the "g" measures, with low to medium intensity. The results of this study suggest that the relationship between WM and "g" should be studied exhaustively. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest that the relationship between WM and "g" should be studied exhaustively.