Diplom Psychologin Colleen Neitzke

Non-verbal, culture free intelligence tests are useful diagnostic instruments to evaluate a person’s level of abstract logical thinking ability.  There are three reasons for choosing to administer this kind of intelligence test rather than a multi-dimensional intelligence test.   The first reason is when the intellectual ability of foreign language children, adolescents or adults needs to be evaluated for whatever reason.   It is only justified to administer this kind of intelligence test if a multi-dimensional intelligence test in the test-taker’s dominant language is not available or cannot be administered.  This may be the case with students attending mono-lingual,  bi-lingual or multi-lingual school whose dominant language is not the language that they are being educated in.   Another reason is if a student has not yet developed one dominant language at all (due to exposure to inconsistent and confusing language environments in his or her early language developmental years).  This may be the case with very young children but also older children and adolescents with “interrupted and/or inconsistent” cultural and language development biographies.

This one-dimensional type of intelligence test can be administered with a minimal amount of verbal communication between the test-taker and the test-administrator.  The test items are processed via visual processing only.  The disadvantage of this kind of intelligence test is that it only allows a statement to be made about the person’s level of abstract logical thinking ability (also called non-verbal intelligence) and not about his or her full range of intellectual abilities.  The full range of intellectual abilities include verbal comprehension (in the dominant language), non-verbal intelligence, short and long term memory functioning, processing speed and visual and auditory attention capacities. Therefore, if a person’s full range of “general intellectual ability” is to be evaluated, a multi-dimensional intelligence test that allows a profile of cognitive strengths and weaknesses to be measured must be administered.

Another good reason to administer a non-verbal, culture free intelligence test is to evaluate if a student has more “potential” intellectual capacity than becomes manifest in the form of his or her level of overall academic performance (expressed as school grades).  In other words, it allows the reliable identification of  “underachieving” students. This categorization applies if the level of general intellectual ability is statistically significant higher than the student’s overall level of academic achievement or if the level of general intellectual ability and the level of academic achievement are more or less compatible, but the level of abstract logical thinking (as measured with a non-verbal, culture free intelligence test) is statistically significant higher.  If such a diagnosis is made, it can be presumed that the student is suffering from an Achievement Motivation Disorder.  He or she is “at risk” of not realizing his or her intellectual and occupational potential in the long term.