Culture and Children's Intelligence Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Wisc-III

Psychologists and special educators are increasingly called upon to assess students newly immigrated from another country. The Wechsler tests are perhaps the most widely translated intelligence test in the world and yet, little is known about the standardization efforts in different countries or how well the WISC-III travels across country, cultural and linguistic borders. This book informs professionals about these issues with respect to 16 different countries in which the WISC has been translated and validated for use. Sources for obtaining translated versions are provided so that psychologists can assess immigrant students with greater confidence in multiple languages, and the assistance of a bilingual examiner. Issues presented are history of the development of the Wechsler tests, use of the WISC-III in each country and its potential use with ethnic groups in multicultural societies, and intelligence and cognitive processes from cross-cultural and indigenous perspectives. Relationships between WISC-III scores and affluence and educational are also discussed. The cross-cultural analysis of the data strongly indicates that the WISC-III is a remarkably robust measure of intelligence with cross-cultural relevance. It would appear that over fifty years of experience with the Wechsler tests and the periodic revisions during this period have resulted in a refined and valid measure of cognitive processes that has considerable power for assessing children's intelligence, even in different cultural contexts.Georgas, James is the author of 'Culture and Children's Intelligence Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Wisc-III' with ISBN 9780122800559 and ISBN 0122800559.