Charting Age-Related Change in the Architecture of Fluid Cognition

While fluid cognition (FC) demonstrates marked development from childhood to adulthood, less is known about the pace of nonlinear improvements in FC processes, whether FC maturation converges across processes, and how FC architecture varies with age. Participants (N = 1049, 8-21 years, 50.52% female, 7.05% Asian, 0.29% American Indian/Alaska Native, 12.96% Black or African American, 0.19% Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 61.11% White, 15.82% mixed race) completed FC tasks indexing inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, processing speed, episodic memory, and working memory. Performance in all processes increased during childhood and early adolescence and grouped into Cognitive Control and Memory sub-architectures. Although this organization appeared in childhood, Cognitive Control and Memory became more distinct with age.