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Riener, C. R., Proffitt, D., & Salthouse, T. (2005). A psychometric approach to intuitive physics. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 12(4), 740-746.The literature on intuitive physics shows that many people exhibit systematic errors when predicting
the behavior of simple physical events. Most previous research has attributed these errors to factors
specific to a certain class of tasks. In the present study, we investigated the possibility that intuitive
physics performance may be related to general measures of cognitive ability. Two hundred four
adults (ages, 20–91 years) were presented with five pairs of intuitive physics questions. It was found
that performance on the intuitive physics items was moderately intercorrelated, suggesting that they
were tapping into a unitary construct. Despite the correlation with factors that decline with advancing
age, intuitive physics performance was not correlated with age (r = .00). The findings are discussed in
the context of research on intuitive physics, as well as research on cognitive aging.
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