Does cognitive ability consist of a single general factor?
The book uses factor analysis to infer the existence of a single hypothetical general factor of cognitive intelligence that is presumed to account for most of cognitive performance. One of the problems with factor analysis as a tool for determining the underlying structure of a system is that neither the factors nor the loadings are uniquely defined if you have more than one factor (Lawley & Maxwell, 1963), and it is difficult to determine if you have only one factor. In experimental cognitive psychology, factor analysis is virtually never used as a tool to determine the underlying cognitive structure. It is a tool for correlational cognitive psychology, not experimental cognitive psychology. I inspected the subject index of some well-known texts in experimental cognitive psychology and found that the term factor analysis never appears in the subject index (e.g., see Anderson, 1985; Matlin, 1994; Reed, 1982). Why not? Kendall and Stuart (1966) may provide the answer: “Application of th
