Cross-cultural differences in visuo-spatial processing and the culture-fairness of visuo-spatial intelligence tests: an integrative review and a model for matrices tasks

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.

Keywords: Cross-cultural psychology; Culture-fair; Fluid intelligence; Method bias; Raven's matrices; Visuo-spatial reasoning.

Fig. 1

Example item for a matrix task. Note This example is fairly typical of what can be encountered in a matrix task. It is somewhat more difficult than most items in the versions of Raven's matrices usually employed for cross-cultural comparisons (due to more rules being included at the same time: distribution of three, movement, pairwise progression), and it uses more colors (but less than other versions, such as those of the Wechsler scales)

Fig. 2

Example item for a block design test. Note This item is from the original version of Kohs' (1920) block design test. The target pattern, printed on a sheet of paper, has to be reproduced using cubes (whose sides are printed red, white, blue, yellow, red-and-white, and blue-and-yellow). The test is timed. Each design uses between 4 and 16 blocks (9 in the above example). Some designs are presented with the reference frame oriented as a diamond