Suitability of published neuropsychological test norms for urban African secondary school students in South Africa

Skuy, Mervyn; Schutte, Enid; Fridjhon, Peter; O'Carroll, Shelley

doi:10.1016/s0191-8869(00)00123-9

Cited by 39 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…In South Africa, Owen (1992) found that 1,093 African 12-to 14-year-old high school students solved 28 out of 60 problems on the Standard Progressive Matrices, which is around the 10th percentile, or an IQ equivalent of about 80 (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998, p. 77). Again in South Africa, Skuy, Schutte, Fridjhon, and O'Carroll (2001) found mean scores 1 to 2 standard deviations below U.S. norms on a wide variety of individually administered tests given to 154 African high school students under optimized conditions. Black university students in South Africa also show relatively low mean test scores.…”

Section: Section 2: the Two Conflicting Research Programsmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Thus, Rushton (2001) reanalyzed data on 10 subtests of the WISC-R published on 154 high school students in South Africa by Skuy et al (2001) and found African-White differences were mainly on g. Rushton and Jensen (2003) compared data on the WISC-R from 204 African 12-to 14-year-olds from Zimbabwe published by Zindi (1994) with the U.S. normative sample for Whites and found 77% of the between-groups race variance was attributable to a single source, namely g.…”

Section: Section 2: the Two Conflicting Research Programsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability.

Rushton¹,

Jensen²

2005

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

375

405

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The culture-only (0% genetic-100% environmental) and the hereditarian (50% genetic-50% environmental) models of the causes of mean Black-White differences in cognitive ability are compared and contrasted across 10 categories of evidence: the worldwide distribution of test scores, g factor of mental ability, heritability, brain size and cognitive ability, transracial adoption, racial admixture, regression, related life-history traits, human origins research, and hypothesized environmental variables. The new evidence reviewed here points to some genetic component in Black-White differences in mean IQ. The implication for public policy is that the discrimination model (i.e., Black-White differences in socially valued outcomes will be equal barring discrimination) must be tempered by a distributional model (i.e., Black-White outcomes reflect underlying group characteristics). Section 1: BackgroundThroughout the history of psychology, no question has been so persistent or so resistant to resolution as that of the relative roles of nature and nurture in causing individual and group differences in cognitive ability (Degler, 1991;Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler, 1975). The scientific debate goes back to the mid-19th century (e.g., Galton, 1869;Nott & Glidden, 1854). Starting with the widespread use of standardized mental tests in World War I, average ethnic and racial group differences were found. Especially vexing has been the cause(s) of the 15-point Black-White IQ difference in the United States.In 1969, the Harvard Educational Review published Arthur Jensen's lengthy article, "How Much Can We Boost IQ and School Achievement?" Jensen concluded that (a) IQ tests measure socially relevant general ability; (b) individual differences in IQ have a high heritability, at least for the White populations of the United States and Europe; (c) compensatory educational programs have proved generally ineffective in raising the IQs or school achievement of individuals or groups; (d) because social mobility is linked to ability, social class differences in IQ probably have an appreciable genetic component; and tentatively, but most controversially, (e) the mean Black-White group difference in IQ probably has some genetic component. Jensen's (1969) article was covered in Time, Newsweek, Life, U.S. News & World Report, and New York Times Magazine. His conclusions, the theoretical issues they raised, and the public policy recommendations that many saw as stemming directly from them were dubbed "Jensenism," a term which entered the J. Philippe Rushton, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada; Arthur R. Jensen, School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to J. Philippe Rushton, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada. E-mail: rushton@uwo.ca Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 2005, Vol. 11, No. 2, 235-294 Copyright 2005 by the American Psychological Association 1076-8971/0...

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Section: Section 2: the Two Conflicting Research Programsmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: Section 2: the Two Conflicting Research Programsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thirty years of research on race differences in cognitive ability.

Rushton¹,

Jensen²

2005

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

375

405

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…South African-based research has clearly demonstrated an association between race and access to quality education [192][193][194][195] and lack of Westernized test sophistication has found significant levels of influence even in so-called 'culturefree' tests. The community from the Northern Cape represents a different 'cultural group' from any established norms and this is most evident in the often depressed normative data that was generated from this population.…”

Section: Discussion and Limitations Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Neuropsychiatry and Neuropsychology Of Lipoid Proteinosis

Thornton¹,

Nel²,

Thornton³

et al. 2008

Journal of Neuropsychiatry

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Lipoid Proteinosis (LiP) is a rare hereditary disease, which often results in bilateral, symmetrical and circumscribed calcifications in the mesial temporal region (especially the amygdala). While several case studies have been published on individuals with this illness, there have been few systematic investigations of the neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology of a series of patients. Thirty-seven LiP patients were extensively assessed with standardized neuropsychiatric and neuropsychological measures. Of these, 27 patients from the Northern Cape in South Africa were matched (for age, gender, education, language, geographical area) with 53 controls. There was a high incidence of neuropsychiatric disorders in LiP (more than half of the subjects reported a history of depression or anxiety and 12% had a diagnosis of schizophrenia). Despite a wide variance, LiP subjects performed poorly on facial recognition for emotions and on most neuropsychological measures including intelligence, recall and executive functioning. These findings are consistent with involvement of the mesial temporal areas in mood, anxiety, and psychotic symptoms, and in the cognitive-affective processes.

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“…We found additional studies with the DAM in Africa (Bakare, 1972;Bardet, Moreigne, & Sénécal, 1960;Minde & Kantor, 1976;Nwanze & Okeowo, 1980;Ohuche & Ohuche, 1973;Skuy, Schutte, Fridjhon, & O'Carroll, 2001). For instance, Ohuche and Ohuche (1973) administered the DAM to 202 children aged 5-11 in an experimental school in Sierra Leone, and found an average IQ of 95 in terms of US norms (Harris, 1963).…”

Section: Draw-a-man Testmentioning

confidence: 92%