Mental Ability Test Research Articles

Racial group differences in employment interview evaluations.

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the effect of race on employment interview evaluations. A meta-analysis of 31 studies found that both Black and Hispanic applicants received interview ratings that on average were only about one quarter of a standard deviation lower than those for White applicants. Thus, interviews as a whole do not appear to affect minorities nearly as much as mental ability tests. Results also suggested that (a) high-structure interviews have lower group differences on average than low-structure interviews, (b) group differences tend to decrease as the complexity of the job increases, and (c) group differences tend to be higher when there is a greater proportion of a minority in the applicant pool. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Auditory information processing during acute insulin-induced hypoglycaemia in non-diabetic human subjects

Acute insulin-induced hypoglycaemia impairs performance on tests of general mental ability in humans. It is recognized that different brain functions vary in their sensitivity to neuroglycopenia, but little is known about the effects of neuroglycopenia on specific brain processes. The effect of controlled hypoglycaemia on two aspects of auditory information processing (auditory temporal processing and simple auditory processing) was examined in a homogeneous group of 20 healthy non-diabetic human subjects. Auditory temporal processing (temporal order discrimination) and simple auditory processing (pitch discrimination, single-tone duration and single-tone loudness discrimination) tests were part of the Test of Basic Auditory Capabilities (TBAC). Two tests of general cognitive performance (Digit Symbol Substitution and Trail Making B) were included to provide a measure of general brain functioning during hypoglycaemia. Hypoglycaemia lead to a significant deterioration in auditory temporal processing ( P < 0.01), and a deterioration in one of three tasks of simple auditory processing (discrimination of single-tone loudness, P < 0.05). Significant disruptions also occurred in both tests of general brain functioning. These results are congruent with other studies in human subjects, showing a disruptive effect of hypoglycaemia on visual information processing when examined under conditions of limited perceptual time, and they provide further evidence of the importance of sensory processing speed in basic perceptual and cognitive functions. The disruptive effect of moderate insulin-induced hypoglycaemia on auditory perception may have implications for insulin-treated diabetic humans exposed to this metabolic stress, because of the importance of hearing in everyday life.

Mental Imagery and Creative Thinking

Relationships between imagery and creative thinking were evaluated in a sample of 560 high school students. The Spatial Test of Primary Mental Abilities (Thurstone & Thurstone, 1989) was used to evaluate imaging ability; the Gordon Test of Visual Imagery Control (Richardson, 1969) was used to evaluate image control; and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Torrance & Ball, 1992) was used to evaluate creativity. Significant correlations were detected between imaging ability and creative thinking. Fluencey, originality, and resistance to premature closure correlations were stronger for students with high IQs than for those with low IQs. Analyses of variance indicated that imaging ability had significant effects on fluency, originality, elaboration, and resistance to premature closure.

Validity and Reliability of an Arabic Modified Version of the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test

An Arabic modified version of the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test was administered to 400 boys and girls in secondary school. Their ages ranged from 15 to 23 years ( M = 16.2 yr., SD = 1.4). The validity and reliability of the test were estimated according to the classical model and the Rasch model and adequate evidence of validity and reliability were obtained, supporting the efficiency and the suitability of the test as a measure of mental ability in the Arab culture.

Similarity in general mental ability in Bedouin full and half siblings

A small battery of g loaded mental ability tests were administered to 274 children from 106 Bedouin families (mean age = 15.0 years, range of age = 7.9 – 18.9 years) attending grade schools in the southern region of Israel. The children were chosen on the basis of being members of families in which the father has two wives and the respondent having a sibling (half- or full-sibling) in the same school. The three measures (Raven, Digit Span and Pedigrees) yielded a large single general factor (the first unrotated principal component— g) replicating their behavior in Western populations. Model-fitting with Mx demonstrated that a model with shared environmental and nonshared environmental influence could explain the data for all three measures as well as the g factor although it was not possible to exclude an additive genetic and nonshared environmental model for the Raven data. The full-sibling maximum likelihood correlation for g was .49; the half-sibling maximum likelihood correlation was .43. These correlations are essentially the same as those based on similar measures gathered on full-siblings and half-siblings of about the same age in Western populations. A contrast measure (Elithorn Mazes) was included in the battery of tests because it has shown little or no familial similarity in previous studies. Similar results were obtained for our full- and half-siblings as well (.0 and .15). These findings demonstrate internal validity for these tests in this cultural context and support the proposition that shared family environment is a strong determinant of sibling similarity for children in this age range.

The relationship of specific mental ability measures compared to a general mental ability measure to quality and quantity performance on a clerical job sample

Barrett (1993) presented evidence that mental ability measures designed specifically for the prediction of performance in tasks and jobs have validity at least equal to that of tests of general mental ability, while having advantages such as lower adverse impact. The current study demonstrates that the match in specificity of predictor and criterion can be attained through simple changes in the scoring of standard mental and clerical ability tests. A sample of 51 university students completed a battery of pre-employment tests and, a week or two later, worked on a clerical job sample. The results indicated that quality of performance (number of errors on the task) was best predicted using the number of errors made on the predictor tests while quantity of work was only predicted by the number correct. A test of general mental ability did not correlate with either criterion. These results contradicted the conclusions of Schmidt (1993) that specific ability tests have no incremental validity above a general ability test.

Aging and cognition: methodological differences in outcome.

A series of longitudinal and cross sectional studies, collected as part of the Seattle Study, were reanalyzed. A longitudinal sequential analysis (N = 232), wherein subjects were measured every seven years for four time periods, was completed on the Primary Mental Abilities test. Cohort differences were at least as strong as age differences; cohorts were generally relatively stable over the measured periods, showing little cognitive decline. A cross-sectional sequential analysis (N = 2813) was completed for the same time periods; decline with age was more evident than with the longitudinal sequential analysis. A cross-sectional analysis for the fourth time period (N = 611) showed the most marked decline of all. Interpretation of outcome was highly dependent on the analysis used.

Malnutrition, poverty and intellectual development.

New findings with important policy implications have revealed that malnutrition in childhood impairs intellectual function in more ways than was previously recognized but also that some of the damage to the brain caused by malnutrition may be reversed. Early research indicated that malnourished animals lacked the energy to interact with their environment and thus performed poorly on tests of mental ability. To determine the effect of poor diet and an impoverished environment on mental development in humans an extensive follow-up study was made of Guatemalan children who received two different nutritional supplements in a 1969-77 study. Mothers and children in two villages received a high-protein supplement (Atole) and those in two additional villages received a supplement with no protein (Fresco). Both supplements reduced mortality but Atole villages saw a 69% reduction in infant mortality (vs. 24% in the Fresco villages). The 1988-89 follow-up of 70% of the original participants involved extensive cognitive testing and socioeconomic assessment. Atole subjects performed significantly better on the cognitive tests and the lowest-income children did as well as their more economically advantaged (but still poor) peers. Those who received Atole exhibited an increased benefit from their years of education and grew up faster and stronger than those who received Fresco. Smaller children who appear younger than their age may receive less stimulation from adult expectations than larger children. These findings indicate that the deleterious effects of early malnutrition on intellectual development can continue into adulthood. Other research has revealed that iron supplements can improve the intellectual and motor abilities of infants. While enriched educational programs can ameliorate some of the problems associated with malnutrition poor children rarely live where such programs are available. The best and least expensive policy would be to prevent malnutrition among young children who would then be able to take advantage of the money invested in schools for their education.

Menstrual cycle, arousal-induction, and intelligence test performance.

Regularly menstruating students (aged 19 to 25 yr.) were tested in the morning under high and low arousal-induction conditions (with time-pressure instructions vs without time-pressure instructions) during either midcycle (n = 16 or menstruation phase (n = 16) to study the interactive effects of menstrual phases and time-pressure stress-induced arousal on intelligence test scores on Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices and Hundal's General Mental Ability Test. A crossover interactive effect of menstrual phase and stress-induced arousal was found on performance of the Hundal test, suggesting that performance of subjects who were tested during the midcycle phase (putatively High Basal Arousal) was impaired under the time-pressure instructions condition (High-induced Arousal) as compared to performance under the without time-pressure instructions condition (Low-induced Arousal), with the reverse pattern of effects being true for subjects who were tested during the menstruation phase. Scores on Hundal's test conform to the Yerkes-Dodson (1908) law which relates arousal to task performance and suggests that the menstrual cycle and performance on the intelligence test was arousal-based. No effects, however, were observed for Raven's Matrices, raising the possibility that task characteristics may mediate the relationship between arousal and performance.

Applying the Rasch Model to the Selection of Items for a Mental Ability Test

The Rasch Model was applied to the selection of items for an Arabic version of the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test. A sample of 599 male and female Kuwaiti secondary school and university students participated in the study. Reliability and validity for each item and for the whole test were determined according to the Rasch model. The use of the Mscale program provided the opportunity to achieve the most desirable technical characteristics for the final test. Correspondence of item calibration to person measurement indicated that the test is suitable for the range of mental ability intended to be measured.

Roles of Hypomania and Intelligence in Antisocial Practices When Self-Esteem and Family Problems are Considered

A sample of 71 nonpsychiatric adults, including 57 men and 14 women, completed the MMPI-2 and the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test. Preliminary support was found for the hypothesis that those who score high both on intelligence and hypomania would express the greatest tendency for antisocial behavior, However, this association occurred only when self-esteem and family problems were not controlled. Moreover, preliminary findings suggest that the interaction between intelligence and hypomania influences self-esteem which then determines antisocial behavior.

Auditory inspection time and intelligence: What is the direction of causation?

Inspection time (IT) is an index of speed of perceptual processing that correlates at moderate levels with tests of mental ability. A key issue has been the question of the direction of causation: is IT causal to individual differences in intellectual ability, or is a fast IT a consequence of having a high IQ? The direction of causation was assessed by administering auditory inspection time (AIT) tests and tests of verbal and nonverbal ability to 104 school children at age 1 1, and 2 years later at 13 years. Three competing structural equation models were tested by using the cross-lagged panel data: that AIT at age 11 causes later IQ; that IQ at age 11 causes later AIT; and that there is equal reciprocal causation. Various goodness-of-fit indexes indicated that the first model was the most acceptable. AIT accounted for about 6% of the variance in cognitive ability 2 years later

The role of verbal ability in the processing of complex verbal information.

This study investigated the relation between psychometric mental-ability test scores and several reaction-time measures; a simple-reaction task, a choice-reaction task, the Posner and Mitchell (1967) letter-identification task, and a variation of the sentence-verification task. Scores on the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices and the Verbal Subtest of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SATV) were obtained. The less complex information-processing tasks replicate earlier studies in which general intelligence was only marginally related to reaction-time measures. The sentence-verification task systematically varied task complexity. Several direct and derived measures from the task were significantly correlated with psychometric mentalability measures. However, even though a number of precautions were taken to ensure that the sentence-verification task assessed purely verbal-processing efficiency, there was little evidence for an important task-specific relation between verification measures and verbal ability. Moreover, despite its relative verbal complexity, sentence verification did not reflect a greater relationship to verbal ability than other tasks did. Overall, the information-processing efficiency measures used in this study suggested a fairly general, rather than a task-specific, relationship to intellectual ability.

Perceived Intellectual Performance Change Over Seven Years

Actual and perceived change in intellectual performance over seven years was examined in a sample of 837 participants in the Seattle Longitudinal Study who took five subtests of Thurstone's Primary Mental Abilities (PMA) test in 1977 and 1984. In 1984 participants rated perceived change in intellectual performance from 1977 to 1984. Participants were categorized, based on their actual performance, into those who maintained earlier performance level, significantly increased their performance, or declined in performance. A typology linking actual and perceived change in performance was created: Realists (those who accurately estimated change in their performance); Optimists (those who oveestimated positive change); and Pessimists (those who overestimated negative change). Classification of participants varied across abilities. Women were more likely to be pessimists on Spatial Orientation than men. Older individuals were more likely to be pessimists on Verbal Meaning and Inductive Reasoning Abilities and to be realists on Number ability compared to younger participants.

Motivation: Cause or confound in information processing/intelligence correlations?

The goal of the present study was to determine whether correlations between information processing scores and intelligence can be explained in terms of between-subject motivational differences. One hundred and nine male and female volunteer college students were tested on a battery of microcomputerized cognitive tests. One hundred of these subjects returned for a second session in which they were randomly assigned to an incentive or no-incentive condition and then retested. The effort expended on the tests was measured via heart rate, skin conductance, and a self-report questionnaire. Criterion measures, including the Advanced Otis-Lennon Test of Mental Abilities and Advanced Raven Progressive Matrices were also taken. The findings revealed that incentives had relatively modest effects on performance. In no case, however, did incentives affect the overall IQ-performance correlation for the tests used in the battery. These results support the view that correlations between information processing scores and intelligence reflect common mental capacities, rather than some affective variable such as motivation.

Hunter and Hunter (1984) revisited: Interview validity for entry-level jobs.

The present investigation provides a reanalysis of the employment interview for entry-level jobs that overcomes several limitations of J. E. Hunter and R. F. Hunter's (1984) article. Using a relatively sophisticated multidimensional framework for classifying level of structure, the authors obtained results from a meta-analysis of 114 entry-level interview validity coefficients suggesting that (a) structure is a major moderator of interview validity; (b) interviews, particularly when structured, can reach levels of validity that are comparable to those of mental ability tests; and (c) although validity does increase through much of the range of structure, there is a point at which additional structure yields essentially no incremental validity. Thus, results suggested a ceiling effect for structure. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed

Validity of a Computerized Information-Processing-Based Test Battery for the Prediction of Performance in a Transport Driver Simulation

The current research was conducted to determine if reliable and valid computerized information processing (IP) measures could be constructed based on a traditional test development framework. A battery of eight computerized IP measures was developed and administered to 64 subjects who also completed a test of general mental ability and a computerized simulation of a transport driver task. The computerized IP measures had adequate split-half and test-retest reliabilities. A majority of the computerized IP measures were correlated with the simulator quantity criterion.

Spearman's g: links between psychometrics and biology.

Individual differences with respect to diverse tests of mental abilities that range in complexity from simple reaction time to abstract reasoning are all positively correlated in the population. The total covariance among all such tests can be analyzed into a number of uncorrelated components of variance, or factors, that, in terms of their generality, are hierarchical, with the most general factor, or g, at the apex. This g factor is common to every type of cognitive performance, whatever other ability factors may be involved (e.g., verbal, spatial, numerical, musical, etc.), and is the crucial factor in most tests' practical validity. Its correlations with various tests' heritability, inbreeding depression, heterosis, average evoked potentials, brain metabolism, and many other physical correlates indicate that as a product of evolution it is profoundly enmeshed with many organismic variables. A theory based on empirical evidence links g to neural processes involved in the speed and efficiency of information processing.

A progression in the neuropsychological decline of Icelandic patients with probable or possible dementia of the Alzheimer's type: a longitudinal study.

To investigate the nature and rate of cognitive decline in dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT), 44 patients with probable or possible DAT (mean age 73.9, range 59-87 years) were given a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. Twenty-five patients were retested 6 months later, and 11 were tested for the third time another 6 months later. Some tests of mental flexibility and double conceptual tracking ability were beyond the capabilities of the patients, and were left out of the statistical analysis because of floor effect. Poor initial performance on tests of attention, concentration, response speed, general cognitive ability, verbal memory, constructional skills, and perceptual closure ability resulted in nonsignificant changes over time (paired t tests). Tests of expressive speech, visuoperceptual functions and nonverbal memory, on the other hand, showed a significant deterioration over time. These findings indicate that when patients with DAT first receive medical attention, many neuropsychological functions are so severe impaired that there is little room for further decline. To describe the longitudinal course of cognitive decline in DAT, tests should be limited to those that assess the more resistant cerebral functions, and are more sensitive to progressive changes.

Cognitive functioning and neuroticism in elderly psychiatric patients

Ninety-four elderly female psychiatric patients completed the short form of the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Information/Orientation and Mental Ability tests of the Clifton Assessment Procedures for the Elderly. Counter to the hypothesis, Neuroticism was found to be positively related to Information/Orientation. Psychoticism was found to be negatively related to Information/Orientation.