Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Adaptive fact learning systems have been developed to makeoptimal use of testing and spacing effects by taking intoaccount individual differences in learning efficiency.Measures derived from these systems, capturing theindividual differences, predict later performance in similarand different fact learning tasks. Additionally, there is a richbody of literature showing that individual differences ingeneral cognitive ability or working memory capacity canpredict scores on achievement tests. If these measures alsoinfluence fact learning, incorporating them might furtherenhance adaptive systems. However, here we provideevidence that performance during fact learning is neitherrelated to working memory capacity nor general cognitiveability. This means that the individual differences captured byour adaptive learning system encapsulate characteristics oflearners that are independent of their general cognitive ability.Consequently, adaptive learning methods should focusprimarily on memory-related processes.