Recent studies of adult cognitive development have distinguished two core abilities: fluid intelligence as a general capacity to infer complex relationships, abstract concepts, and to deduce logical implications from general rules; and crystallized intelligence as a capacity to solve problems by using organized knowledge schemes from specific disciplines. In order to investigate a possible relationship between cognitive abilities and area of study, this research studied the correlation between fluid and crystallized intelligence measures and academic achievement among 960 freshmen students of eight areas of study: Medicine, Dentistry, Psychology, Business, Engineering, Mathematics, Education, and Literature. The results have indicated that the academic achievement is correlated with different abilities profile.
Basic abilities; Fluid and crystallized intelligence; Educational assessment; Intelligence theories
