Educability-and-Group-Differences-1973-by-Arthur-Robert-Jensen

78 Educability and Group Differences
without time limit, although most children finish in 10 to 15
minutes. The test is best regarded as a developmental scale of
mental ability. It correlates substantially with other IQ tests, but
it is considerably less culture-loaded than most usual IQ tests. It
is primarily a measure of general cognitive development and not
just of perceptual-motor ability. Children taking the test are urged
Figure 3.1 The ten simple geometric forms used in the Figure
Copying Test. In the actual test booklet each figure is presented
singly in the top half of a 5^" x 8^" sheet. The circle is If" in
diameter.
to attempt to copy every figure. Ability to succeed on a more
difficult item in the age scale is not functionally dependent upon
success on previous items in the sense that the easier item is a
prerequisite component of the more difficult item. By contrast,
skill in short division is a component of skill in long division. The
age differential for some tasks such as figure copying and the
Piagetian conservation tests is so marked as to suggest that they
depend upon the sequential maturation of hierarchical neural