The broad goal of this project is to advance our understanding of the relationship between culture and information processing efficiency. Hispanic students have typically shown a half of a standard deviation lower differential on WAIS-R scores (Suzuki, Meller, and Ponterotto, 1996) and an 80 points or more lower differential on 600-point SAT scores (Pearson, 1993) than their Caucasian counterparts. Information processing tasks are thought to be able to tap into discrete components, or stages of processing, of an individual's overall general cognitive functioning and are thought to have fewer cultural influences than other forms of cognitive testing. Saccuzzo, Johnson, and Guertin (1994) have demonstrated that measures of efficiency of information processing (i.e., the Visual Backward Masking, VBM, task) had the strongest relationship with both IQ and membership in a gifted program when compared to other information processing tasks and there were no differences in ethnicity on the VBM task. Inspection time (IT) on the VBM task has demonstrated a reliable, substantial correlation with IQ measures, accounting for approximately 20% of the variance in intelligence (Deary & Stough, 1996). Furthermore, psychophysiological measures are theorized to be more culture-fair than standardized cognitive ability tests. Task-evoked pupillary responses have been shown to index 'mental effort' (Beatty, 1982), and individuals with higher cognitive ability show lower pupillary response to cognitive tasks (Ahern & Beatty, 1979). The proposed project will examine the relationship between efficiency of information processing on the VBM task and higher-order general cognitive capacity (Satz-Mogel Abbreviated Version of the WAIS-R and SAT scores) for Mexican-American and Caucasian undergraduate students and how the level of acculturation (Scale of Ethnic Experience, SEE) may moderate this relationship. In addition, by utilizing a psychophysiological measure (pupillary responses) to investigate cognitive/neural efficiency during performance on the VBM task, this project will provide an additional novel approach to measuring the relationship between cognitive capacities and culture. METHODS: Forty Caucasian and forty Mexican-American undergraduate students will be given a visual backward masking (VBM) task and task- evoked pupillary responses, and detection accuracy on the task will be obtained. Associations between indices of efficiency of information processing and the students' WAIS-R and SAT scores will be evaluated. Subjects will be screened on the Scale of Ethnic Experience (SEE) to ensure a broad range of acculturation within the sample.
| Verney, Steven P; Granholm, Eric; Marshall, Sandra P et al. (2005) Culture-fair cognitive ability assessment: information processing and psychophysiological approaches. Assessment 12:303-19 |
