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Two studies investigated the relationship between students' perceptions of mathematical problem relatedness and their performance on tests of verbal and mathematical ability. A total of 156 eighth-grade students partitioned collections of mathematical verbal problems into disjoint subsets whose problems they judged to be mathematically related. The extent to which a person sorted problems on the basis of mathematical structure was significantly related to the individual's problem-solving ability as well as other mathematical and verbal abilities. Furthermore, partial correlations analysis indicated that the relationship remained significant even when the effects of general ability variables such as IQ were controlled.
Edward A. Silver (Tue,) studied this question.