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.