General cognitive ability vs. general and specific aptitudes in the prediction of training performance: Some preliminary findings. Paper presented at the 96th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association

Recently there appears to have been an increase in interest in the relative power of general ability and narrower cognitive aptitudes to predict real world performance in training programs and on the job. This area has important practical implications for personnel selection and classification, particularly for large organizations such as the United States military which assigns people differentially to jobs based on patterns of measured abilities. This study Examined the ability of Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Bat (ASVAB), forms 8, 9, and 10 to predict training performance, us technical jobs in the U.S. Navy with at least 900 people in each job. Performance was the measured criterion. For one job, Mess Management Specialist, performance was measured as final school grade. The other nine technical jobs were self-paced; the criterion was the number of hours required t