[You can take the cubes test here. Email optional. You can register with a fake name]

As I analyze the data from the general knowledge test, I thought I would post the cubes test. Tests of cube analysis date back to World War I and perhaps before. The subest was supposed to be part of the Wechsler intelligence scales but they decided to drop it. Wechsler (1958) wrote:

The Cube Analysis test was discarded after being given to over 1000 subjects because it showed large sex differences, proved difficult to get across to subjects of inferior intelligence and because it tapered off abruptly at the upper levels…Apparently others have had less discouraging results with the test; it was included in the Army GCT (World War II). We still think that the test has serious shortcomings.

I’m a bit surprised that Wechsler found the test hard to administer to low grade people as part of what attracted me to the test was its utter simplicity, however perhaps duller subjects don’t grasp what a cube is or have problems perceiving drawings of them.

Despite such warnings, I decided to include the cube test in my battery. For starters, excluding a test because of sex differences seems unscientific because it assumes a priori that the sexes have equal intelligence and there’s no reason to think that. Wechsler didn’t apply that procedure when it comes to race, so why apply it when it comes to sex. Perhaps because the Binet test found little or no sex differences and that was seem as the gold standard before the Wechsler was developed and perhaps because if he did apply that standard to race he’d have virtually no subtests left.

My second reason for including this in the PAIS is I wanted at least one test involving blocks since these hold nostalgic value from being tested as a child.

Finally, I needed more spatially loaded content.

As already mentioned, you can take the test here.