Abstract
The role of knowledge and of general intellectual skills in the acquisition of complex learning. The main aim of this work is to examine the relation existing between intellectual ability and the ability to organize knowledge, within the scope of a more general model on the factors explaining the acquisition of knowledge and skills. It attempts to check if a compensatory effect takes place between the general intellectual ability and the ability to organize knowledge. It also attempts to establish whether the learning in people with broader knowledge of a specific domain is determined or explained by the same variables accounting for the learning in people who get smaller knowledge. The results, in a sample of university students, reveal that no interaction takes place between both factors; rather than that, intellectual ability and the quality of the conceptual organization have an additional effect. Nevertheless, it is observed that the effect of intelligence is not the same on the different levels of acquired knowledge.
