NONVERBAL COGNITIVE MEASURES AS PREDICTORS OF ACADEMIC SUCCESS FOR CHILDREN FROM ANGLO AND HISPANIC CULTURES.

Abstract

One hundred and fifteen second and third grade Anglo and Hispanic boys and girls from an isolated rural town in Arizona were tested on two nonverbal measures of cognitive skills to ascertain their predictive validity and ethnic bias. Bias was addressed by regression analysis, a technique that allows for the comparison of slopes and intercepts for two or more groups. The children from both ethnics were roughly equated on SES variables due to the location and nature of the community. The Raven's Coloured Test of Cognitive Skills (NTCS) were employed to predict the state-mandated California Achievement Test (CAT) and the pupils' grade point average (GPA). The results suggested that the Raven's exhibits both slope and intercept bias for three of the four criterion variables whereas the NTCS demonstrated bias only in terms of GPA. Both nonverbal tests correlated highly indicating that they are measuring similar skills. The NTCS generally had higher predictive validity than the Raven's. A combination of the two tests increased prediction by only a small amount. These results indicate that, contrary to previous research, the Raven's may be a biased predictor for Hispanics and that the NTCS appears both less biased and a better predictor. Both nonverbal test validities approached the WISC-R correlation coefficients for Hispanics. Neither test proved to be a potent predictor of Anglo test scores or GPAs. This differential validity infers that the nonverbal tests be employed with caution with native English speakers. The hypothesized reasons for the better performance of the NTCS included its measuring of more than one skill. The two tests were contrasted in terms of psychometric considerations, training time, and testing time. Limitations of the study as well as suggestions for further research with various non-native speakers of English was discussed.