Rey-Mermet, Alodie; Singmann, Henrik; Oberauer, Klaus; (2025) Neither measurement error nor speed-accuracy trade-offs explain the difficulty of establishing attentional control as a psychometric construct: Evidence from a latent-variable analysis using diffusion modeling. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review (In press).

Text InhibInAgingDM_preprint(1).pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 9 October 2025. Download (5MB)

Abstract

Attentional control refers to the ability to maintain and implement a goal and goal-relevant information when facing distraction. So far, previous research has failed to substantiate strong evidence for a psychometric construct of attentional control. This could result from two methodological shortcomings: (a) the neglect of individual differences in speed-accuracy trade-offs when only speed or accuracy is used as dependent variable, and (b) the difficulty of isolating attentional control from measurement error. To overcome both issues, we combined hierarchical-Bayesian Wiener diffusion modeling with structural equation modeling. We re-analyzed six datasets, which included data from three to eight attentional-control tasks, and data from young and older adults. Overall, the results showed that measures of attentional control failed to correlate with each other and failed to load on a latent variable. Therefore, limiting the impact of differences in speed-accuracy trade-offs and of measurement error does not solve the difficulty of establishing attentional control as a psychometric construct. These findings strengthen the case against a psychometric construct of attentional control.

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