Gender differences in latent cognitive abilities and education links with g in Italian elders

The process of ageing induces researchers to study the psychological characteristics of elders, particularly general intelligence or g. The g factor can be extracted from a correlation matrix of a battery of cognitive tests and is a significant predictor of success in life. One of the most important questions in intelligence research is if there are gender differences in latent cognitive abilities and different relationships between education and g in males and females. Analysis with structural equation models was applied on 1,168 volunteer normal, healthy older adults aged 65–84 years from the Italian standardization sample for old age of the WAIS-R. The results suggested that there are no gender differences in latent cognitive abilities, while education showed a significant relationship with intelligence, both for males and females.