General intelligence and its relationship to immediate memory for novel and activated information

Sixty-five ninth grade subjects were given two tests of immediate memory. They listened to novel first-last name pairs and to normatively rare but semantically related free association (FA) pairs. On immediate recall they either supplied the last name in response to the first name, or supplied a FA in response to the stimulus word of the FA pair. FAs that were identical to those presented were regarded as correct recall of activated information. Presentation-to-recall lag was manipulated by giving the recall or association cues in an order opposite to presentation. Both tests tap immediate memory because they showed fast forgetting. However, they did not correlate significantly. Recall of names correlated significantly with general intelligence when lag was short (0–2 or 2–4), rs = 0.42 and 0.32. The results support a multiple component view of WM. They show that immediate memory for novel relational information is related to intelligence whereas memory for activated information is not.