Commenter RR has a left a series of comments on this blog denying the very idea of culture fair IQ tests.
For example he writes:
. CULTURE-FREE IQ TESTS ARE AN IMPOSSIBILITY AS ALL HUMAN COGNIZING TAKES PLACE IN A CULTURAL CONTEXT!
This is a tautology not a testable hypothesis. The concept of culture bias needs to be operationalized if it wants scientific credibility.
In the field of psychometrics, a test is typically defined as culturally biased if the regression line predicting school performance from IQ is different in one group than another. For example, if blacks with an IQ of 120 get an A in algebra (on average), but whites with IQs of 120 get only a B, then the test is said to be culturally biased against blacks.
Why? Because if the test is underpredicting the grades of black kids, then it’s probably also underpredicting their intelligence as well.
The literature on predictive bias is extensive and it turns out that by this definition, neither IQ tests nor college admission tests are biased against any visible minority group in the United States. Indeed just the opposite, the tests tend to overpredict black achievement, and thus might even be considered biased against whites!
However this definition assumes that the criterion that test is predicting (i.e. school grades) is itself free from bias, but what could be more culturally loaded than school (the place where culture is explicitly taught).
Perhaps a better criterion than school grades would be real world survival skills. We could dump people in the middle of the woods and see how long they take to find their way out (each person would have a GPS locator they couldn’t use but could be used to find them) or have people compete in mock warfare like paintball. Again, if blacks with an IQ of 120 performed as well as whites with an IQ of 120 on these tasks (equating for practice and physical fitness), then IQ tests are unlikely to be culturally biased. But if 120 IQ blacks dominated 120 IQ whites, then it’s likely the tests are underestimating their intelligence.
Another way of testing for culture bias, as Jensen has alluded to, is to compare groups on physiological measures of intelligence like MRI brain size, evoked brain potentials, nerve conduction speed, neural adaptability reaction time etc. Jensen estimates that a comprehensive battery of such tests would correlate > 0.5 with IQ and this would be ideal for testing for culture bias. If for example, the nation of Nepal scored 3.8 standard deviations below the UK mean on tests like the Raven we would want them to take the physiological measure of intelligence.
The > 0.5 correlation would between IQ and its physiological proxies predicts that Nepal would score at least 3.8(0.5) = 1.9 SD below UK norms on physiological measures, but if they would score much better than this (and they would) we would know that the IQ test was culturally biased against them, and thus is dramatically underestimating their neurology.
We can never say, categorically, than any given test is culture fair, but what we can say is that test A is culture fair with respect to cultures B and C. For example in the 1920s it was proven that hardcore performance tests (similar to Block Design and Object Assembly subtests on the WAIS) are culture fair to people with and without schooling. I wrote the following in 2014:
… excellent research in the 1920s showed that canal boat children who lived a nomadic existence where they were virtually deprived of schooling, showed massive declines in IQ as they got older. Because IQ tests are normed for age, and because these kids were kept out of school they fell further and further behind their chronological age-mates on the type of knowledge that IQ tests measure. Young canal boat kids would have an IQ around 90, but older canal boat kids would have an IQ of 60. However in a footnote on page 1001 of this document, scholar Arthur Jensen writes:
When the canal boat children were tested on nonverbal performance tests, there was much less decline in scores and the average IQ of the children was 82, which is a typical value for unskilled workers, as the canal boat people were. Fewer than 1 in 10 obtained performance IQs below 70, and in fact there was a slight positive correlation between performance IQ and age
This demonstrates that some IQ tests really do come close to the culture fair ideal. People understood that in the 1920s, but decades of post-modern propaganda has brainwashed generations of credulous university students into thinking otherwise.
Pumpkin Person 
Puppy am I banned or what? None of my comments ig going tru now.
Don’t cry loser.
Use that magical word
PLEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAASEEEEEEEE
80s music is great. I mean really really great.
if i were a self-identifying pakistani i would shoot myself in the butthole with a whale harpoon cannon.
And if I scored only 125 on the WISC like you I’d kill myself. Even hatian born afro scored in the gifted range on an actual IQ test as a child but of mug of pee could not. Pathetic
Wtf?????
Charlatan, you should read some of the statistics journals before making obviously false claims like:
>The literature on predictive bias is extensive and it turns out that by this definition, neither IQ tests nor college admission tests are biased against any visible minority group in the United States. Indeed just the opposite, the tests tend to overpredict black achievement, and thus might even be considered biased against whites!
Read here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/014662169201600411
And then read the actual literature that has useful definitions of bias; misclassification rates, for example.
>In the field of psychometrics, a test is typically defined as culturally biased if the regression line predicting school performance from IQ is different in one group than another.
If you define bias this way, you will make incorrect inferences. See the above paper and then see Vetta’s commenary on Jensen’s precis of his crap book:
>The concept of cultural bias in IQ is well known and understood by everyone. Jensen redefines it. I do not accept his definition and believe that he should have chosen a different name for his own concept, which I feel has no validity. Nothing but confusion results when you take a widely used concept and give it a different meaning. Jensen is not really discussing cultural bias but his concept of “predictive test bias.” A short paper in a research journal explaining this concept should have been sufficient. He would regard a test as having predictive bias if its regression coefficients, intercepts, or standard errors for the two groups differ (p. 381). He then hypothesizes different mental growth rates for the two ethnic groups (the idea of polygenes causing different mental growth rates in ethnic groups of a nonisolated population may prove to be too much even for those geneticists who admire Jensen’s understanding of genetics). He then asserts that on this basis we should find Xb/Xw=σb/σw= a constant. Without using a test of significance he says that the difference between the two ratios which equals 0.03 “is a nonsignificant difference” (p.425). So the hypothesis of different mental growth is acceptable.
>I do not accept Jensen’s reasoning but would like to point out that a proper test of significance would show that the two ratios differ. The equation involving the two ratios can be written in a slightly different form, namely, 100σb/Xb=100σw/Xw. This, of course, means that the two coefficients of variation are equal. To avoid the complexity of finding the standard error of the difference between the two coeffi- cients of variation, we may use the simpler technique of confidence limits. Black sample size was 1800. The black and white coefficients of variation, Vb and Vw axe 15.37 and 16.11 respectively. The standard error of Vb is 0.256 and its 95 percent confidence limits are 14.87 to 15.87. Vw lies outside these limits. The two ratios differ significantly. Jensen’s assertions consequently cannot be accepted.
^^^TRANSSEXUAL^^^
But you still can’t kill yourself trumptard jewishballs sucker…
He and van de Vijver (2007: 12) write that “An item is biased when it has a different psychological meaning across cultures. More precisely, an item of a scale (e.g., measuring anxiety) is said to be biased if persons with the same trait, but coming from different cultures, are not equally likely to endorse the item (Van de Vijver & Leung, 1997).”
Cole (1981) notes that “that the notion of a culture free IQ test is an absurdity” because “all higher psychological processes are shaped by our experiences and these experiences are culturally organized” while also—rightly—stating that “IQ tests sample school activities, and therefore, indirectly, valued social activities, in our culture.”
Different cultures/classes have difference cultures. Different cultures lead to different experiences which lead to differences in psychological traits. So a difference in culture can explain differences in test scores since IQ tests are experience-dependent and culture-bound. (As Fagan and Holland (2002, 2007) show, for example.)
“Another way of testing for culture bias, as Jensen has alluded to, is to compare groups on physiological measures of intelligence like MRI brain size, evoked brain potentials, nerve conduction speed, neural adaptability reaction time etc.”
How would this test for culture bias?
“For example in the 1920s it was proven that hardcore performance tests (similar to Block Design and Object Assembly subtests on the WAIS) are culture fair to people with and without schooling.”
See the Ceci cites from yesterday.
His and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development (and IQ as he argues in his book) show what the cause of IQ score differences is.
“”But even though such [cognitive] potentials may be genetic in origin, this does not mean that they contribute to variance [in IQ]: Everyone may possess them to the same degree, and the variance may be due to environment and/or motivations that led to their differential crystallization.” (Ceci, 1996)
“… individual differences in biological constraints on specific cognitive abilities are not necessarily (or even probably) directly responsible for producing the individual differences that have been reported in the psychometric literature.” (Ceci, 1996)
“This demonstrates that some IQ tests really do come close to the culture fair ideal.”
Even if this is true (it isn’t), “coming close” isn’t culture-free so the original claim holds.
IQ tests are experience-dependent and culture dictates experience. So culture differences are the cause of IQ differences, since people in different cultures are exposed to different things—specifically, not the knowledge and structure of IQ tests.
“People understood that in the 1920s, but decades of post-modern propaganda has brainwashed generations of credulous university students into thinking otherwise.”
What is “post-modern propaganda”?
“Different cultures/classes have difference cultures. Different cultures lead to different experiences which lead to differences in psychological traits”
Different groups have different cultures which lead to different experiences leading to differences in psychological traits *
Why do you even bother debating rr? He’s an idiot. Just ban him.
pill does have autism.
sad.
Cole (1981) notes that “that the notion of a culture free IQ test is an absurdity” because “all higher psychological processes are shaped by our experiences and these experiences are culturally organized” while also—rightly—stating that “IQ tests sample school activities, and therefore, indirectly, valued social activities, in our culture.”
It’s no enough to say culture affects us; you have to be able to show that the cultural differences between groups are so great that the test is unfair to one group, and fairness has to be measurable.
“Another way of testing for culture bias, as Jensen has alluded to, is to compare groups on physiological measures of intelligence like MRI brain size, evoked brain potentials, nerve conduction speed, neural adaptability reaction time etc.”
How would this test for culture bias?
Since physiological scores are not culturally biased, yet are predictable from IQ scores in the dominant culture, they serve as a way of anchoring different IQ scores to a biological standard. If that standard changes from one culture to another, then the test has a different biological meaning in different cultures which makes it ipso facto biased.
His and Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development (and IQ as he argues in his book) show what the cause of IQ score differences is.
No models don’t show anything. Actual data applied to testable hypotheses is what shows stuff (i.e. canal boat kids).
“It’s no enough to say culture affects us; you have to be able to show that the cultural differences between groups are so great that the test is unfair to one group, and fairness has to be measurable.”
I went through the logic: culture dictates experience and knowledge acquisition. IQ tests are tests of knowledge. This, different cultures lead to different IQ scores. Al’s, Fagan and Holland.
“Since physiological scores are not culturally biased, yet are predictable from IQ scores in the dominant culture, they serve as a way of anchoring different IQ scores to a biological standard. If that standard changes from one culture to another, then the test has a different biological meaning in different cultures which makes it ipso facto biased.”
Richardson dissected these claims 30 years ago (Understanding Intelligence).
“No models don’t show anything. Actual data applied to testable hypotheses is what shows stuff (i.e. canal boat kids).”
It’s a developmental view of human development (how humans develop) and IQ. The model proposes that individual differences in cognition are understood best in a bioecological framework understood with three components: g doesn’t exist, but multiple cognitive potentials do; context, such as motivational factors, and the social/physical aspects of the test matters, along with values passed through parenting, how much knowledge one has (which affects what they can do on tests), all of which are important during cognitive development and when one takes a test. (See Richardson, 2002 for a further exposition on Ceci’s motivational/social factors and IQ. So cognitive potentials continually tap into one’s knowledge base while they’re cognizing which then alters the structure and contents of the base of knowledge. And, again, those tests are biased, see Cockcroft et al which you recently wrote a about. Bokc design is biased, schooling affects it.
I went through the logic: culture dictates experience and knowledge acquisition. IQ tests are tests of knowledge. This, different cultures lead to different IQ scores. Al’s, Fagan and Holland.
Your logic is based on false premises. Not all cultural experiences are sufficiently different to cause IQ differences, and not all IQ tests test knowledge. Some test novel problem solving.
“Since physiological scores are not culturally biased, yet are predictable from IQ scores in the dominant culture, they serve as a way of anchoring different IQ scores to a biological standard. If that standard changes from one culture to another, then the test has a different biological meaning in different cultures which makes it ipso facto biased.”
Richardson dissected these claims 30 years ago (Understanding Intelligence).
No Richardson is very unlikely to have even heard these claims, let alone dissected them. The logic is sound. I don’t know why you have such a hard time understanding it.
It’s a developmental view of human development (how humans develop) and IQ. The model proposes that individual differences in cognition are understood best in a bioecological framework understood with three components: g doesn’t exist, but multiple cognitive potentials do; context, such as motivational factors, and the social/physical aspects of the test matters, along with values passed through parenting, how much knowledge one has (which affects what they can do on tests), all of which are important during cognitive development and when one takes a test. (See Richardson, 2002 for a further exposition on Ceci’s motivational/social factors and IQ. So cognitive potentials continually tap into one’s knowledge base while they’re cognizing which then alters the structure and contents of the base of knowledge.
To quote Rushton, it’s very easy to throw ideas around without any empirical verification.
And, again, those tests are biased, see Cockcroft et al which you recently wrote a about. Bokc design is biased, schooling affects it.
There’s no strong evidence that schooling affects block design. There is however very strong evidence (canal boat kids in the 1920s) that schooling does NOT affect scores on certain performance tests.
What is “post-modern propaganda”? Also note that the definitions of bias I provided are what item bias is – not Jensen’s obfuscations.
“Your logic is based on false premises.”
Which premises are false?
“No Richardson is very unlikely to have even heard these claims, let alone dissected them”
What makes you say this?
“To quote Rushton, it’s very easy to throw ideas around without any empirical verification.”
The model proposes that there are many cognitive abilities that develop independently of each other; GxE interactions; and context-specific cultural tools (like schooling, parenting etc). Why don’t you read up on the model, PP? Specifically Ceci and Bronfenbrenner and Ceci.
“There’s no strong evidence that schooling affects block design.”
False. Schooling affects all aspects of cognition, knowledge acquisition and information processing. Again, see the cites from Ceci.
“There is however very strong evidence (canal boat kids in the 1920s) that schooling does NOT affect scores on certain performance tests.”
Which tests? Was this 100 year old study replicated?
“Your logic is based on false premises.”
Which premises are false?
I literally just told you in the two sentences immediately following the one you quoted. This is why people question your reading comprehension.
“No Richardson is very unlikely to have even heard these claims, let alone dissected them”
What makes you say this?
Because Jensen never explicitly said we should use physiological tests to test for cultural bias, he just vaguely hinted at it, but not strongly enough for Richardson to respond. It’s me who’s explicitly saying it.
The model proposes that there are many cognitive abilities that develop independently of each other; GxE interactions; and context-specific cultural tools (like schooling, parenting etc). Why don’t you read up on the model, PP? Specifically Ceci and Bronfenbrenner and Ceci.
Is this the paper?
“There’s no strong evidence that schooling affects block design.”
False. Schooling affects all aspects of cognition, knowledge acquisition and information processing. Again, see the cites from Ceci.
He cited data showing schooling is CORRELATED with figure ground tasks, but block design is not much about figure-ground discrimination,
“There is however very strong evidence (canal boat kids in the 1920s) that schooling does NOT affect scores on certain performance tests.”
Which tests?
See A Study of Performance Tests (Gaw, 1925)
Was this 100 year old study replicated
No because today almost everyone attends school so it’s harder to assess the impact of schooling on IQ in an ethical way.
So, PP, explain how Fagan and Holland’s (2002, 2007) studies don’t “show that the cultural differences between groups are so great that the test is unfair to one group” while also showing that “fairness [is] measurable.”
Also, please explain what “post-modern propaganda” is. You’ve used similar terms in the past but have not define what they mean.
So, PP, explain how Fagan and Holland’s (2002, 2007) studies don’t “show that the cultural differences between groups are so great that the test is unfair to one group” while also showing that “fairness [is] measurable.”
Fagan and Holland (2007) were able to show bias against blacks on some tests, but not on any of the major ones, though I only skimmed part of their paper.
Also, please explain what “post-modern propaganda” is. You’ve used similar terms in the past but have not define what they mean.
Theories that are advanced to make the professional class more politically correct.
RR was trained to use sofistry like his masters. I recommend people avoid him. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He uses methods not to clarify or explain things but to obscure them. I recommend ostracize him so he will become revelant only to his sofistry club members. It’s would be the best way to behave about him but… this blog seems needs all kind of weirdos to feed its comment section. No matter what you say to him, he only will rethink his dogmatic perspective if he will, if he accep his own mistakes but i don’t think it’s will happen soon or late.
Different than PP’s simpleton approach about post modernism in academia, it’s healthy and good we have other perspectives to understand given reality. To define leftist or conservatism-revisionism in academia just post modernism shows ignorance about it.
“Fagan and Holland (2007) were able to show bias against blacks on some tests, but not on any of the major ones, though I only skimmed part of their paper.”
RIght—on verbal (knowledge) tests. The biggest difference in subtests between blacks and whites is on vocabulary and i think Block Design… sooo….?
“Theories that are advanced to make the professional class more politically correct.”
Weird definition of “post-modernisim.”
“RR was trained to use sofistry like his masters”
Who are my “masters”?
“I recommend people avoid him.”
I recommend people avoid me too. Avoid contradictions to deeply-held “HBD” knowledge!
“this blog seems needs all kind of weirdos to feed its comment section”
haha do you think you’re not one of them?
“I literally just told you in the two sentences immediately following the one you quoted. This is why people question your reading comprehension.”
I asked because it was vague.
“Because Jensen never explicitly said we should use physiological tests to test for cultural bias, he just vaguely hinted at it, but not strongly enough for Richardson to respond. It’s me who’s explicitly saying it.”
So, to be clear, you’re asserting that Richardson hasn’t responded to “MRI brain size, evoked brain potentials, nerve conduction speed, neural adaptability reaction time”?
“Is this the paper?”
Yup. Here’s a primer:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/bioecological-model
Click to access BronfenbrennerModelofDevelopment.pdf
Click to access EJ746058.pdf
Click to access 13bioecologicalassessment.pdf
https://arrow.dit.ie/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=appadoc
It’s superior to all other models (e.g., psychometric, Triarchic theory [Sternberg], information processing, knowledge-based, genetic/biological, contextual, multiple intelligences, modular theories, and Piagetian theories).
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EGByYiBWoAEPb-W?format=jpg
“No because today almost everyone attends school so it’s harder to assess the impact of schooling on IQ in an ethical way.”
You’re aware there is good evidence for the cumulative deficit hypothesis? IQs of first graders are nearer to the national means than to their older siblings, indicating that the deficit is due to bad schooling.
And Ceci has a bit about the boat children on p 102 table 5.1:
In cases In which children did not attend school (e.g., canal boat children), the correlation between their age and IQ was -.75, indicating that the more years of school missed, the lower their IQs. (Gordon, 1923; Freeman, 1944).
”I recommend people avoid me too. Avoid contradictions to deeply-held “HBD” knowledge!”
So naive…
”haha do you think you’re not one of them?”
Where i said this*
Theres a version of Chopin’s 13th mazurka in empire of the sun by Steven Spielberg that’s very evocative of the old British empire. People say america took its place but in many ways it didn’t, only culturally was it a world standard. The British empire can be remembered in the private schools, elocution and books. But I think the best way to remember it is the music. Music is a bit like time travelling sometimes. One remembers the moods and feelings of people that lived in those times.
Harvard historian Ferguson’s book was a very good synopsis on why the british empire was a positive force for humanity unlike the Latin empires of Spain and Portugal for instance. My country was colonised by the british and a lot of the empire still remains 100 years on in the buildings culture and so on here. Objectively the british empire was a civilising force. I’m co flicted on whether we should have kicked them out.
Delusion; Ferguson is not a legitimate historian.
Pill has a flath-mind… incapable to understand the true complexity beyond his childish reasoning approach…
”it’s not always right or wrong… oftentimes, only one correct understanding of given reality will be relatively-right but…”
Russians are very good at classical music.
Melon will now say they are not good at rap. Hahaha.
Sadly for you the best russian composer was a FAG… awwnnn
I’ve never heard Russians rap. I’ve heard them beta box though and they’re pretty good.
Most white people arent good at rapping
If the British empire still existed in africa, African GDP would probably be triple in the colonies under consideration and knowing the universal love tendencies of white people, disease and other pestilence would be fought by the empire.
Not everything is culture-bound. That is why I’ve suggested we do a study where we upload a newborn’s mind to a computer and find out what he or she (and I can’t stress he or she enough tbh) is thinking and what they would think is relevant in terms of knowledge. Would give unique insights into things.
Archetypes are also interesting. This is also a very significant force in what we can achieve in finding from the proposed study that I have just attempted to justify. I think there are universal things about the human mind we can find out about.
Robert did you li e through the 50s? When I think of the absolute pinnacle of western civilisation I think of the 50s in america and the song i only have eyes for you by the flamingos. Very atmospheric.
Just because he has dementia does not mean he’s old. Sometimes dementia strikes early & since his IQ was so low to begin with, he can’t mask it as well as most dements
Pumpkin, can you do an article on the Ivan Ivec IQ tests? Also, what would you estimate Steven Pinker’s IQ to be.
ADHD and a host of psychiatric issues that I’ve had to endure have crippled my ability to soundly think and perform to my expectations, etc.
I’ve always sympathized with Anime, Pill, and others on this blog for this very reason. I know how it’s like to have your dreams crushed due to under-performance, mainly due to a lack of efficiency that the human mind can evolve to take on if everything was up to par, I suppose.
No, that’s culturally biased.
Stuff White People Like #128 Camping
Why don’t black people camp?
How a Notorious Racist Inspired America’s National Parks
>This is a tautology not a testable hypothesis.
but it’s still correct
but it’s still correct
Meaningless statements are neither correct nor incorrect.
There’s nothing “meaningless” about it. Different groups of people have different beliefs and values which are socially transmitted generation to generation. These beliefs and values cause differences in cognition (thinking). Since different groups have different cultures and are therefore exposed to different experiences than other cultures (for instance, minor vs major cultures) and IQ since IQ tests are tests of a dominant culture, then it follows that what causes score differences are differences in experience. (Again for the millionth time, see Fagan and Holland for evidence.)
Gosh…
Sorry, R&R, i find you very polite but… i can’t… you keep misunderstanding the basics of science, just because Southern Italians are clines and on avg, and based on given criteria not at the same pair on swedes… or you believe that southern italians and swedes only differ from culture**
PP can read Jensen a trillion times but I wonder if he’s read Intelligence and Testing and Minority Students by Valencia and Suzuki? Furthermore, Jensen’s definition of “bias” is stupid, as sillyolyou has shown. The definitions I showed hit much closer to home.
In fact, Suzuki was a coauthor on one of the great responses to Rushton and Jensen (2005).
Pumpkin, if you miss out on a question in similarities because your brain fogged up, but later in the day you got the correct answer, does that mean if your brain was clear you most likely would’ve gotten the question?