Abstract
Visuo-spatial reasoning tests, such as Raven's matrices, Cattell's culture-fair test, or various subtests of the Wechsler scales, are frequently used to estimate intelligence scores in the context of inter-racial comparisons. This has led to several high-profile works claiming that certain ethnic groups have lower intelligence than others, presumably due to genetic inferiority. This logic is predicated on the assumption that such visuo-spatial tests, because they are non-verbal, must be culture-fair: that their solution process does not significantly draw on factors that vary from one culture to the next. This assumption of culture-fairness is dubious at best and has been questioned by many authors. In this article, I review the substantial body of psychological and ethnographic literature which has demonstrated that the perception, manipulation and conceptualization of visuo-spatial information differs significantly across cultures, in a way that is relevant to intelligence tests. I then outline a model of how these inter-cultural differences can affect seven major steps of the solution process for Raven's matrices, with a brief discussion of other visuo-spatial reasoning tests. Overall, a number of cultural assumptions appear to be deeply ingrained in all visuo-spatial reasoning tests, to the extent that it disqualifies the view of such tests as intrinsically culture-fair and makes it impossible to draw clear-cut conclusions from average score differences between ethnic groups.
Highlights
Research on race and intelligence Comparisons of average intelligence in different ethnic groups have flourished in psychology
This review has shown how these various cultural influences can affect each successive step of Raven’s matrices, and more generally of visuo-spatial intelligence tests
It appears that these tests are definitely not "culture-free." It is a certainty that differences in performance between ethnic groups do exist (Wicherts et al, 2010a), but to directly accept them as a deficiency on the part of subjects whose culture has far less prepared them to interpret and manipulate this type of materials is definitely an instance of ethnocentrism (Berry et al, 2002)
Summary
Research on race and intelligence Comparisons of average intelligence in different ethnic groups have flourished in psychology. A verbal test can be translated in the local language and communicated more or less appropriately with the help of an interpreter; but the structural medium of a visuo-spatial test is not translated and remains bound to the culture by which it was designed This certainly plays a role in comparisons between countries and ethnic groups whose cultural uses of pictorial representations differ. A related concept is that of sensotypes: it has been argued that African cultures place less emphasis on vision than on other senses, which could lead subjects to
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