ABSTRACT
It would appear that in testing children in non-western societies who have been exposed to several years of schooling, or schooled adults, the problems of unfamiliarity of test materials and instructions are very similar to those at home. Naturally 14-year-old Africans, say, will need simpler explanations and more demonstrations than English children, because their mean performance may be equivalent to that of average English nine or ten-year-olds, and the most backward ones may score at five to six year level. The difficulties will obviously be greater if instructions have to be given in a second language such as English. But if these points are borne in mind, the same policy as is commonly adopted in the UK at the 11+ stage should generally be effective, namely to allow the pupils to take a parallel test beforehand and to spend half-an-hour or so giving additional explanations or coaching. This produces average rises in Verbal Reasoning or intelligence quotients of some five to ten points, though the figure varies considerably, depending mainly on the extent to which the pupils have become accustomed to other tests in their ordinary school work. Verhaegen & Laroche comment that there is less difficulty in getting Africans to respond to competition than there is among N. American Indians.
