Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test

Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test
Purposemeasure cognitive abilities devoid of sociocultural influence

The Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) was created by Raymond Cattell in 1949 as an attempt to measure cognitive abilities devoid of sociocultural and environmental influences.[1] Scholars have subsequently concluded that the attempt to construct measures of cognitive abilities devoid of the influences of experiential and cultural conditioning is a challenging one.[2] Cattell proposed that general intelligence (g) comprises both fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystallized intelligence (Gc).[3][4] Whereas Gf is biologically and constitutionally based, Gc is the actual level of a person's cognitive functioning, based on the augmentation of Gf through sociocultural and experiential learning (including formal schooling).

Cattell built into the CFIT a standard deviation of 16 IQ points. [5]

  1. ^ Cattell, Raymond (1949). Culture Free Intelligence Test, Scale 1, Handbook. Champaign, IL: Institute of Personality and Ability Testing.
  2. ^ Aiken, L. R. (31 May 2004) [Plenum 1996]. Assessment of Intellectual Functioning. Perspectives on Individual Differences (2nd ed.). Springer. p. 242. ISBN 978-0-306-48431-5. LCCN 95026038. OCLC 33443438. Raven's Progressive Matrices and the Culture Fair Intelligence Test represent commendable efforts to develop tests on which different cultural groups score equally well. It is now recognized, however, that constructing test items whose content is independent of experiences that vary from culture to culture is only partially successful.
  3. ^ Cattell, R. B. (1963). Theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence: A critical experiment. Journal of Educational Psychology, 54, 1-22.
  4. ^ Horn, J. R. & Cattell, R. B. (1966). Refinement and test of the theory of fluid and crustallized intelligence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 57, 253-270.
  5. ^ Hunt, E. (2011). Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-521-70781-7. 'average' intelligence, that is the median level of performance on an intelligence test, receives a score of 100, and other scores are assigned so that the scores are distributed normally about 100, with a standard deviation of 15. Some of the implications are that: 1. Approximately two-thirds of all scores lie between 85 and 115. 2. Five percent (1/20) of all scores are above 125, and one percent (1/100) are above 135. Similarly, five percent are below 75 and one percent below 65.