Explain Cattell's theory of intelligence, including how it relates to children with different cultural and educational backgrounds

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

According to Cattell, in addition to Spearman's g, intelligence consists of two broad factors. Crystallized intelligence refers to skills that depend on accumulated knowledge and experience, good judgment, and mastery of social customs—abilities acquired because they are valued by the individual's culture. On intelligence tests, vocabulary, general information, and arithmetic problems are examples of items that emphasize crystallized intelligence. In contrast, fluid intelligence depends more heavily on basic information-processing skills—the ability to detect relationships among stimuli, the speed with which the individual can analyze information, and the capacity of working memory. Fluid intelligence, which is assumed to be influenced more by conditions in the brain and less by culture, often works with crystallized intelligence to support effective reasoning, abstraction, and problem solving.
Among children with similar cultural and educational backgrounds, crystallized and fluid intelligence are highly correlated and difficult to distinguish in factor analyses, probably because children high in fluid intelligence acquire information more easily. But in children differing greatly in cultural and educational experiences, the two abilities show little relationship; children with the same fluid capacity may perform quite differently on crystallized tasks. As these findings suggest, Cattell's theory has important implications for the issue of cultural bias in intelligence testing. Tests aimed at reducing culturally specific content usually emphasize fluid over crystallized items.