- Eliminating The Culture Variable In Intelligence Testing -
The problem with intelligence and innate ability testing traditionally has been the tendency for one culture to devise and implement the testing on a completely different culture. Blacks have argued for years that inferior intelligence and innate ability testing on behalf of their culture is because the tests are designed and implemented by whites, “for decades, critics have complained that the tests psychologists use to measure intelligence-commonly known as intelligence or IQ tests-are culturally skewed. This cultural bias, critics say, causes Blacks to score an average of 15 points lower than whites on IQ tests,” Editor, 1996: 1).
However, there are those who feel that there is no way to take the culture out of intelligence tests because the two are inextricably intertwined. Because of this reason, some modern experts feel that it is impossible to take the element of culture our of IQ testing, “Culture and IQ tests are regarded as inseparable, making culture-free intelligence tests impossible. It is also proposed that intelligent behavior cannot be separated from the influence of paleocerebral functions such as emotions and compulsion,” (Editor, 1997: 1). This analysis will discuss some of the new types of testing that have been devised in order to try to measure intelligence and innate ability in testing that has eliminated the element of culture.
Cognitive Ability Tests (CAT) have long been flawed because they are not so much culturally biased, as that they are administered to other cultures by cultures who originally created them and implemented them within the social, political, legal and economic dynamics of their culture. As such, these tests are often flawed for the different cultures whose cognitive abilities they try to measure, “In the United States, every person has psychological attributes that may be classified as racial, cultural...