An enduring enterprise of experimental psychology has been to account for individual differences in human performance. Recent advances in neuroimaging have permitted testing of hypotheses regarding the neural bases of individual differences but this burgeoning literature has been characterized by inconsistent results. We argue that careful design…

The contrasting approaches of differential psychology and cognitive psychology to the same individual differences data are outlined. Using data from the Clark and Chase sentence-picture verification task, four loci of conflict between these two disciplines are identified: (1) theory versus measurement; (2) meaningfulness versus reliability; (3)…