IS SUSCEPTIBILITY TO DISTRACTION RELATED TO MENTAL-ABILITY

In order to assess the effects of individual differences in attentional focus on measures of mental skills, 272 university undergraduates were tested. Distractibility was determined in a speeded visual search task by comparing performance in the presence and absence of extraneous auditory and visual stimuli. Mental ability was measured using tests of crystallized intelligence and verbal ability. Although mental abilities were measured under normal (no distraction) conditions, high-distractible subjects on average were 9.4 percentile points lower than low-distractible subjects on the cognitive skills measures. This suggests that perceptual/attentional factors are an important aspect of measured intelligence.