Fluid and Crystallized Literacy: 
         Implications  for Adult Literacy  Assessment and Instruction

Tom  Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

Psychometric  research on intelligence over the last half century has 
resulted in a trend to  draw a distinction between the knowledge aspect and the 
processing skills  aspects of intelligence. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing 
up to the 1990s,  the British psychologist, Raymond B. Cattell and various 
collaborators, and  later many independent investigators, made the distinction 
between "fluid  intelligence" and "crystallized intelligence." Cattell (1983) 
states, "Fluid  intelligence is involved in tests that have very little cultural 
content,  whereas crystallized intelligence loads abilities that have 
obviously been  acquired, such as verbal and numerical ability, mechanical aptitude, 
social  skills,  and so on. The age curve of these two abilities is quite  
different. They both increase up to the age of about 15 or 16, and slightly  
thereafter, to the early 20s perhaps. But thereafter fluid intelligence steadily  
declines whereas crystallized intelligence stays high" (p. 23).

Cognitive  psychologists have re-framed the "fluid" and "crystallized" 
aspects of cognition  into a model of a human cognitive system made-up of a long 
term memory which  constitutes a knowledge base ("crystallized intelligence") for 
the person, a  working memory which engages various processes ("fluid 
intelligence") that are  going on at a given time using information picked-up from 
both the long term  memory's knowledge base and a sensory system that picks-up 
information from the  external world that the person is in. Today, over thirty 
years of research has  validated the
usefulness of this simple three-part model (long term memory,  working 
memory, sensory system) as a heuristic tool for thinking about human  cognition 
(Healy & McNamara, 1996).

The model is important because it  helps to develop a theory of literacy as  
information processing skills  (reading as decoding printed to spoken 
language)  and comprehension (using  the knowledge base to create meaning) that can 
inform  the development of  new knowledge-based assessment tools and new 
approaches to adult  education.

The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), the new Adult  Literacy and 
Lifeskills (ALL) survey, the National Adult Literacy  Survey  (NALS) of 1993 
and the new 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) all  used "real 
world" tasks to assess literacy ability cross the life span from 16  to 65 and 
beyond. Such test items are complex information processing tasks that  engage 
unknown mixtures of knowledge and processes. For this reason it is not  clear 
what they assess or what their instructional implications are (Venezky,  1992, 
p.4).

Sticht, Hofstetter, & Hofstetter (1996) used the simple  model of the human 
cognitive system given above to analyze performance on the  NALS. It was 
concluded that the NALS places large demands on working memory  processes ("fluid  
intelligence").  The decline in fluid intelligence  is what may account for 
some of the large declines in  performance by older  adults on the NALS and 
similar tests. To test this hypothesis, an assessment of  knowledge ("crystallized 
intelligence") was developed and used to assess adult's  cultural  knowledge 
of vocabulary, authors, magazines and famous people.  The knowledge  test was 
administered by telephone and each item was  separate and required only  a 
"yes" or "no" answer, keeping the load on  working memory ("fluid  intelligence") 
very low.

Both the  telephone-based knowledge test scores  and NALS door-to-door survey 
test  scores were transformed to standard scores with a mean of 100 and a   
standard deviation of 15. The results showed clearly that  younger adults  did  
better on the NALS with its heavy emphasis on working memory processes  
("fluid  literacy") and older adults did better than younger adults on the  
knowledge base  ("crystallized literacy") assessment that was given by  telephone.

Consistent with the foregoing theorizing and empirical  demonstration, 
Tamassia, Lennon, Yamamoto, & Kirsch (2007) report data from  a survey of the 
literacy skills of adults in the Adult Education and Literacy  System (AELS) of the 
United States. Once again they found that performance on  the literacy tasks 
declined with increased age, that is, the higher the age of  the adults, the 
lower their test scores became. They state that, "…the negative  relationship 
between age and performance is consistent with
findings from  previous studies of adults (i.e., IALS, ALL, and NAAL; NCES 
2005; OECD and  Statistics Canada 2000, 2005)." They go on to say, "Explanations 
of these  previous findings have included (a) the effects of aging on the 
cognitive  performance of older adults, (b) younger adults having received more 
recent and  extended schooling, and (c) the finding that fluid intelligence may 
decrease  with age causing older adults to have more difficulties in dealing 
with complex  tasks (Douchemane and Fontaine 2003; OECD and Statistics Canada 
2000, 2005)"(p.  107).

Strucker, Yamamoto, & Kirsch (2005) assessed short term,  working memory for 
a sample of adults who also completed Prose and Document  literacy tasks from 
the IALS. They found a positive relationship between  performance on the 
working memory task and the literacy tasks, showing that  adults with better short 
term memories performed better on the IALS. Again, this  is consistent with 
the idea that the literacy tasks involve a complex set of  skills and knowledge, 
including the capacity to manage information well in  working memory or 
"fluid literacy."

Given the differences between younger  and older adults on "fluid literacy"  
and "crystallized literacy"   there is reason to question the validity of 
using  "real world" tasks like  those on the Prose, Document and Quantitative 
scales of the IALS, ALL, NALS,  and  NAAL to represent the literacy abilities of 
adults across the life  span. In  general, when assessing the literacy of 
adults, it seems wise to  keep in mind the differences between short term, working 
memory or "fluid"  aspects of literacy, such as  fluency in reading with its 
emphasis upon  efficiency of processing, and the  "crystallized" or long term 
memory,  knowledge aspects of reading.

It is also important to keep in mind these  differences between fluid and 
crystallized literacy in teaching and learning.  While it is possible to teach  
knowledge, such as vocabulary, facts,  principles, concepts, and rules (e.g., 
Marzano, 2004), it is not  possible  to directly teach fluid processing. 
Fluidity of information processing, such as  fluency in reading, cannot be directly 
taught. Rather, it must be   developed through extensive, guided,  practice. 
Though I know of no  research on  this theoretical
framework regarding the differences  between fluid and  crystallized literacy 
and instructional practices in  adult literacy programs, it can  be 
hypothesized that all learners are  likely to make much faster improvements in 
crystallized literacy than in fluid  literacy, and this should be especially  true for 
older learners, say those  over 45 to 50 years of age.

References

Cattell, R. (1983)  Intelligence and National Achievement. Washington, DC:
The Cliveden  Press.

Healy, A. & McNamara, D. (1996) Verbal Learning and Memory:  Does the Modal
Model Still Work? In J. Spence, J. Darley, & D. Foss  (Eds.), Annual Review 
of Psychology, 47,143-172.

Marzano, R. J. (2004,  August). Building Background Knowledge For Academic
Achievement: Research On  What Works In Schools. Washington, DC: Assn. For
Supervision &  Curriculum.

Sticht, T., Hofstetter, & Hofstetter (1996) Assessing  Adult Literacy By 
Telephone. Journal of Literacy Research, 28,  525-559

Strucker, J., Yamamoto, K. & Kirsch, I. (2005, May). The  Relationship of the 
Component Skills of Reading to Performance on the  International Adult 
Literacy Survey (IALS). Cambridge, MA: National Center for  the Study of Adult 
Learning and Literacy.

Tamassia, C., Lennon, M.,  Yamamoto, K. & Kirsch, I. (2007). Adult Education 
in America: A First Look  at Results From the Adult Education Program and 
Learner Surveys. Princeton, NJ:  Educational Testing Service.

Venezky, R. (1992, May) Matching Literacy  Testing with Social Policy: What 
Are the Alternatives? Philadelphia, PA:  National Center on Adult Literacy.

Thomas G. Sticht
International  Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA  92019-2059
Tel/fax: 96190 444-9133
Email:  tsticht at aznet.net


<BR><BR><BR>**************************************<BR> AOL now offers free 
email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at 
http://www.aol.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/learningdisabilities/attachments/20070315/26c75487/attachment.html