The Primary Mental Abilities Of South American Students : A Second Comparative Study Of The Generality Of A Cognitive Factor Structure

Abstract

In an earlier study, the Primary Mental Abilities (PMAs) of Chinese students studying in American Universities was compared with those of American college students. In the present study, the PMAs of South American college students are compared with the PMAs of the Chinese students. Thirty- one tests (twenty with English instructions and eleven with Spanish instructions) were administered to 92 South American students who were participating in the English Language Institute of the University of Michigan. After treating the South American data by Ahmavaara's transformation analysis, seven factors were matched between the South American and Chinese studies; the congruence indices for the two sets of factors ranged between .953 and .780.