The General Ability Measure for Adults

Abstract

The assessment of individuals with diverse linguistic backgrounds has posed a challenge to psychologists for over 100 years. In the United States, the armed forces had a need for the evaluation of their recruits’ cognitive ability as early as World War I. Nonverbal intelligence tests played a significant role in the psychological evaluations of that time, since many of the recruits were either non-English-speaking immigrants or individuals with little or no formal schooling. About a century later, psychologists are still facing similar issues when assessing the cognitive ability of individuals in the general population, who are either linguistically different from the English speaking population, and therefore are at a disadvantage when taking tests that have verbal directions, require verbal expressive skills, or exposure to formal schooling. The statistics presented in the various chapters of this book about the new and changing demographics of the United States clearly suggest that nonverbal intelligence tests are as important today as they were a century ago.

For a continuous update on research studies regarding the GAMA and to obtain a training CD, the reader is encouraged to contact the author at achilles.bardos@unco.edu.