Since the popularization of cognitive ability, many competing theories have emerged to define the construct. However, the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theory has become the dominant model among leading researchers. CHC identifies three layers of cognitive ability – starting at the general level (which is what Wonderlic measures) and getting successively more and more narrow in terms of ability. The general cognitive ability measured by Wonderlic is what has been most commonly studied in relation to predicting job performance across all jobs. In fact, as the CHC theory took hold among most cognitive ability experts, researchers shifted their efforts away from understanding intelligence itself and toward showing that cognitive ability can predict meaningful outcomes, like job performance.
