Race Effect

19 Pages 4720 Words

l context to another, the ubiquitous view is that the male is supreme to the female in IQ.
Although lay people realise and appreciate the influence of environmental factors on test scores, lay theories of intelligence may be relatively culture and group specific. The cultural surroundings of an individual mediate his or her cognitive attributes. Culture, according to Geertz (1973) is a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbolic form by means of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about attitudes toward life. Culture and cognition are interdependent. Goodnow (1976) suggests that problems or tasks do not exist in a vacuum. Neither are they connected to some abstract set of principles or framework .Rather they are bounded by a culture’s definition of the problem to be solved and its definition of the right techniques of solution (ibid.). Accordingly, culture defines not only what its members should think or learn but also what they should ignore or treat as irrelevant aspects. Vygotsky (1978...