• April 8, 2021

Gender, Age and Grade Differences in Pakistan on Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices Test

Introduction

The term intelligence is defined as the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act with determination, think rationally and deal effectively with the environment. People differ in intellectual capacity. This difference is due to the particular genes we inherit and the environment in which we grow up. The environmental conditions that determine how an individual’s intellectual potential will develop include nutrition, health, the quality of stimulation, the emotional climate of the home, and the type of feedback elicited by the behavior.

The only way that intelligence can be assessed quantitatively is by measuring the various aspects of intelligence. Intelligence measurement essentially consists of a qualitative and quantitative assessment of mental output in terms of their numbers and the speed at which they are affected. Intelligent behavior could be roughly classified into three types: mechanical, social, and abstract.

The intelligence test result shows that those who score high on any of the intelligence test types tend to score high on the rest, and the same holds for those who score low or intermediate. All intellectual abilities can be expressed in terms of two factors: a general or intellectual factor common to any skill and another specific factor specific to any particular skill.

The Raven Colored Progressive Matrices Test has been used widely in a wide variety of settings in different countries around the world, including Pakistan, as a fair cultural measure of non-verbal intelligence. It is designed for use with children between the ages of 5 ½ and 11/2 years old. Measure abstract reasoning by using nonsensical geometric diagrams. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of age, gender, and grade on intelligence scores.

Method

Sample

The sample consisted of 192 students from Karachi High School, including 107 boys and 85 girls in first, second, and third grade. Their ages ranged from 5 1/2 to 10 years. and 5 months.

Procedure

Before the actual test, a good relationship was established with the children and the nature of the test was explained to them to reduce their anxiety about the test. Therefore, it was held in an informal setting. The test was administered individually according to standard instructions. However, they were given in the Urdu language for better understanding. The RCPM was scored with a manual scoring key. The number of correct responses of the subject constituted the total score in the test. The age (in years) of the children was also verified from the school record.

Results and Discussion

The data of the 192 students reveal that there is no significant difference between the intellectual performance of boys and girls on the RCPM (the mean for boys is 16.02 and for girls it is 16.69). This finding is consistent with previous findings (eg, Aiken, 1982, Halpern, 1986). It can be suggested that the quality of stimulation and feedback that are necessary for the development of mental faculties, such as for educating relationship and analogical reasoning, is more or less the same for both sexes. Furthermore, reinforcement of problem-solving behavior, stimulation, and sexual typing by parents and teachers may not be different for the older children included in the present study.

The test result regarding grades indicates that higher grade children perform better than lower grade children. Ansari and Iftikhar (1984) suggested that while there is no significant effect of grading on GDS scores in rural school children in Pakistan, there is a significant effect of grading on GDS scores in the urban group. Schooling seems to improve various perceptual skills (eg, mental rotation, equal-different judgments, visual-spatial reasoning (discrimination of figures and background) and conceptual skills (eg, learning rules, free association, reasoning analog, multiple classification) that are necessary for successful performance on IQ tests.

Schooling also helps students with attitudes and values ​​(eg, paying attention to the test environment, monitoring and timing their responses and intrinsic motivation, which can improve their performance on the test. However, it cannot be ignore the possibility of the confounding effect of motivation in better performance of children in higher grades.

The present study also indicates that the effect of various age groups on CPR is significant.

References:

Aiken, L, R. (1982). Psychological Tests and Evaluations (4th Ed.). Boston; Allyn and Baccon.

Ansari, ZA and Iftikhar, MN (1984). Validity of Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices for Urban and Rural School Children in Pakistan (Part 1, Basic Facts). Islamabad; National Institute of Psychology.

Halpern, DF (1986). Sex differences in cognitive abilities. New Jersey; Lawrence Erlbaum.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *