Abstract
Abilities that explain the Intelligence decline: Evidence from the WAIS-III. Intelligence test's scores decline with age, but such decline change for fluid and crystallized tests. However, little effort has been put to investigate what cognitive abilities are responsible for such decline. The present paper focuses on that issue. A hierarchical factor analysis (performed through the Schmid-Leiman transformation) followed by the method of correlated vectors let us to answer that question. Both procedures were applied to the Spanish standardization sample of the WAIS-III. Results show that g and performance factors are responsible for the decrease on the scores. The verbal factor (Gc) does not account for such decline. Therefore, results draw a more fined-grained view about the Horn's model distinguishing vulnerable and sustainable cognitive abilities.
