Intercultural differences in the formation of intellectual abilities can be noticed already at preschool age. The study compares the results of Dutch, German, Czech, and Slovak standardization samples in the nonverbal SON-R 2''-7 intelligence test. It is seen that in nonverbal tests the best achievements are shown by German children. Their strength is manifested mostly in the solution of concrete tasks, in which it is necessary to employ attention and patience. Czech preschoolers show good achievements too; they are relatively the best in abstract thinking. On the other hand, tasks of this type are the hardest to solve for Dutch children of preschool age. Slovak children excel in abstract thinking (especially in thinking with the use of analogies); however, they significantly lag behind in solving ordinary practical situations. Standardization studies also revealed intercultural differences in variances of results and in factor structure of the test. Whereas the abilities of Dutch and German children differentiated into performance and reasoning abilities, in the Czech sample this differentiation was little in evidence, and Slovak preschool children preferred to use syncretic thinking (only their common intellectual factor was demonstrated).
Financed by the National Centre for Research and Development under grant No. SP/I/1/77065/10 by the strategic scientific research and experimental development program:
SYNAT - “Interdisciplinary System for Interactive Scientific and Scientific-Technical Information”.