Sorry, I fail to see how asking to choose a specific geometric figure out of four can be culturally biased.
Unless we embrace the culture of "there are no wrong answers".
Unless we embrace the culture of "there are no wrong answers".
I think a lot of newcomers from very poor countries may not be exposed to some things as often, they might not be thinking about shapes and geometry in the same way - more importantly, the notion of tests and test taking.
Solving little abstract problems in a test format as we understand them ... I think is something that's only normalized in certain countries.
I think there's enough potential variance in those things to make a difference.
It's not like people can't grasp what a 3D cube is ... but some cultures just may have that much more exposure to things, more familiarity. Enough to move the needle.
I went to a French immersion school as a kid, in an English city. I studied mostly in French for most of the day until high school. When they did some kinds of testing, there were 'word tests' which depended on some degree of vocabulary.
Though my peers were basically 'a cut above' in almost everything (French immersion was basically public school's version of private school) ... we did noticeably more poorly on that test, granted the lexical nature of it makes 'cultural bias' more obvious.
I think it's 'a thing' though maybe a small thing.
Things like 'bear is to dog as fish is to: a) flower b) whale c) door d) donkey' ... kind of thing.
It's not supposed to test language proficiency, but it can have an effect.
Black and (a) white, (b) blue, (c) proud, (d) decker.
For "name the next number in the series" questions there literally are no wrong answers unless you place further restrictions.
IQ tests typically use shapes and not numbers, but that doesn't solve this specific question. Finding the answer is more about finding the same answer as the official solution, which is culture dependant
Now a good question would give me only one of these as possible answer, but in practise having multiple viable answers happens and I have to judge how complicated the question was supposed to be, what the test's expectations are etc. If you ask a Japanese you might get a different answer than if you ask a French simply because of how different their academic cultures are.
No, but whether that is a meaningful measure of intelligence is where the bias creeps in. In our times having high mathematical aptitude is considered to be a sign of intelligence and intelligence is associated with success, so the very same people who like mathy things design IQ tests and hand out credentials and make the most money, so the entire process is largely circular.
What constitutes intelligence is dependent on what environment you're in. If in 100 years all the technical things have been automated it's conceivable that people with high degrees of social intelligence or creativity who can leverage technology rather than implement it will get to define what intelligence means.
IQ predicts those as well, not just mathematical ability. The theory of "multiple intelligences" has serious weaknesses which have not been addressed by its proponents, chief among those is that the "different intelligences" are highly correlated.
You can claim bias against blind people, but cultural bias is nonsense.
There are (or were) actually tests used by psychologists that include testing one's vocabulary. Which is knowledge, not intelligence.
But, the trend of increased screen time in my opinion is a bad one and would probably lead to lowered IQ. There's no reason to get stuck on a problem or spend time being bored. As children playing with Lego, Mechano, K'nex, etc, we taught ourselves to solve problems with no shortcuts. We were bored, we found a problem, we got stuck, we troubleshooted and we overcame. It seems like the younger generations of today are losing this Scientific process.
Probably the most concerning issue is that the reward system doesn't require pushing your mental abilities. You can see interesting output without having to put the work in. Because many of the websites/apps measure success in engagement, they literally want you to do as little work as possible to see as much interesting content as possible. Contrast that to pre-screen time, where if you wanted to play with the Lego model on the box you had to build it. Mechano would even actively put mistakes into the instructions to allow kids to problem solve.
Really? You can't think of any factors other than innate genetic intelligence that would influence your success in answering questions like this?
Let me give you the first example that springs to mind. I can come up with many more.
I used to know someone who had anxiety issues about their intellectual ability and would clam up when they felt they were being tested. Anything that seemed "test-like" to them would make them stressed and confused. I would bet any attempt to measure their IQ that triggered this behaviour would produce a lower score than if they didn't suffer from this.
Is that a measure of innate intelligence?
Like I said I can think of many similar scenarios although they would be more hypothetical.