PRETEND INTELLIGENCE 99additions, subtractions, and substitutions of symbols across columns and
down rows, and the deduction of new information from them.
Th ese arrangements and rules are far more likely to be part of the culture
and mindset in families whose parents have white- collar occupations than
in others. Being able to handle them involves acquired mental skills, just as
the use of a physical tool develops certain patterns of motion in limbs and
muscles. Or, as Richard Nisbett put it in Th e Geography of Th ought, “Diff er-
ences in thought stem from diff erences in social practices.”^33
It is well known that families and subcultures vary in their exposure
to, and usage of, the tools of literacy, numeracy, and associated ways of
thinking. Children will vary in these because of accidents of background.
Indeed, it is suggested from brain imaging and other studies that back-
ground experience with specifi c cultural tools like literacy and numeracy
is refl ected in changes in brain networks (see chapters 7 and 9). Th is ex-
plains the importance of social class context to cognitive demands, but it
says nothing about individual potential.
In other words, items like those in the Raven contain hidden structure
which makes them more, not less, culturally steeped than any other kind
of intelligence testing item. Th is cultural specifi city is hardly surprising,
because as already mentioned, the items are the products of the cogni-
tions of human beings who themselves have been immersed in a specifi c
cultural milieu.
It has been a great mistake to classify verbal items as knowledge
based, and nonverbal items, like the Raven, as somehow not knowledge
based, when all are clearly learning dependent. Ironically, such cultural-
dependence is sometimes tacitly admitted by test users. For example, when
testing children in Kuwait on the Raven in 2006, Ahmed Abdel- Khalek
and John Raven transposed the items “to read from right to left following
the custom of Arabic writing.”^34
Again, this suggests that IQ tests are not mea sures of some mythical
cognitive strength. Th ey simply refl ect the diff er ent kinds of learning by
children from diff er ent (sub)cultures: in other words, a mea sure of learn-
ing, not learning ability, and are merely a redescription of the class struc-
ture of society, not its causes. Th is is further confi rmed in particularly
striking ways. When children are adopted from lower- class into middle-
or upper- class homes, they rapidly gain as much as 12–18 IQ points.
This content downloaded from 139.184.14.159 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 13:52:12 UTC