Both behavioral studies and the neurophysiological data modelling suggested female advantage in memory for objects, however, most research pertained to long-term memory, whereas data from visual working memory (VWM) are scanty. In a large sample of 2044 people, the number of objects supposedly encoded in VWM was measured during the change detection task. The stimuli were either relatively familiar geometric shapes or less familiar Greek symbols. Controlling for the general ability level, a small but significant advantage for memorizing shapes in VWM was found in females over males, but no effect was observed for memorizing abstract symbols. The present results support neuroimaging models of human cognitive architecture, suggesting that female VWM relies on a more complex network of domain-specific brain modules, as compared to males. Consequently, formal models of VWM and related cognitive processes should account for sex and material type.

Previous research showed that individual tendency to believe in conspiracy theories is related to numerous social, personality, and cognitive variables. Moreover, such a tendency may reflect a broader trait for epistemic irrationality, which drives other pseudo- scientific and paranormal beliefs. However, the relationship between conspiracy belief and reasoning ability (fluid intelligence; Gf) was not sufficiently studied to date, even though Gf level strongly influence the way in which individuals think and reason. Using confirmatory factor analysis, we found the robust link between conspiracy belief and other irrational beliefs. All those irrational beliefs were also substantially related to the close- minded cognitive style. However, even though Gf significantly predicted other irrational beliefs, it explained less than 2% of variance in conspiracy belief. This result suggests that effective reasoning cannot prevent even highly intelligent people from endorsing conspiracy theories.

A field study examined how strongly the three categories of epistemically unwarranted beliefs: pseudoscience, conspiracist, and paranormal beliefs, can be predicted by cognitive ability in young participants from several European countries. Each type of beliefs was significantly and strongly correlated with the remaining two types of beliefs, but only weakly related with cognitive ability, suggesting a minor role of reasoning and problem solving processes for forming and holding unwarranted beliefs. However, a role of cognitive ability for rejecting unwarranted beliefs was stronger in males than in females.

Literature on sensory discrimination suggests that it relies on two separate abilities, one related to processing of auditory-temporal stimuli, and the other involved in processing non-temporal visual stimuli. Musical training is associated with structural and functional adaptations in the brain, which improve sensory processing. However, to date the advantage of musicians was particularly evident in the auditory and temporal tasks (as related with perception of music). This study aimed to investigate potential advantages of musicians not only in the ability to discriminate auditory and temporal stimuli, but also with regard to visual discrimination. As many as nine adaptive stimulus discrimination tasks were administered to 56 musicians and 54 non-musicians, with both groups matched on working memory capacity. The musicians displayed better discrimination scores in each modality, including the visual one. The results support the view of modality-independent perceptual benefits resulting from prolonged musical training.

So-called insight problems are believed to tap into sudden, creative thinking that is crucial for real problems. In contrast, recent findings suggest that solving insight problems depends on the same cognitive mechanisms that underpin systematic, analytical thinking. However, existing studies may have low ecological validity, because insight problems were usually presented in static formats (on paper, computer screen) which allowed no physical interaction with the problem elements. This study administered 8 established insight problems either in the static or interactive variants. It also probed two markers of analytical thinking: working memory capacity and reasoning ability. Virtually no difference in performance was observed between the static and interactive variants of insight problems with regard to (1) solution rate, (2) subjective experience of suddenness, pleasure, and relief accompanying the solutions, as well as (3) correlations with the working memory capacity and analytical reasoning tests. These results suggest that externalized/embodied/situated factors play no substantial role in insight problem solving and the crucial parts of this process seem to occur in the mind of a solver.

At dawn of cognitive science, it was hypothesized that performance on diverse sensorimotor tasks is rooted in unitarysensory discrimination ability that shares the same neural resource with complex cognition. A century of research yieldedinconclusive evidence. We modelled the factor structure for 33 diverse visual sensorimotor, memory, and reasoning tasks,completed by 234 young adults. Covariance structure models indicated two considerably correlated, yet statistically sepa-rate, sensorimotor abilities reflecting temporal vs. non-temporal processing. However, initially moderate relationships ofeach simple ability with reasoning disappeared when mediated by working memory, suggesting that sensory discriminationplays no explanatory role for complex cognition. These results were replicated in another study of 255 young adults, whoadditionally attempted auditory sensorimotor tasks. The latter appeared to be separate from temporal and visual abilities.Overall, sensory discrimination does not constitute unitary ability. Moreover, individual differences in complex cognitioncannot be reduced to sensory discrimination.

Two leading analogical reasoning paradigms: A:B::C:D task and scene analogies, to date studied in isolation, were appliedto the same 61 participants. The former task included 3 types of distracting response options (relational, semantic, andperceptual); the latter task imposed cross-mapping (response options that suggested a wrong structure to be mapped). First,relational and semantic, but not perceptual, distractors were similarly frequently selected, but their choices were weaklycorrelated. These choices were unrelated to cross-mapping in the other task, either. So, various sources of distraction canplay a role in the analogical reasoning process.