Introduction and scope of the review

Research into the abilities of black people in Southern Africa has been motivated primarily by pragmatic objectives, chiefly in the spheres of assessing educability at school and trainability in the work situation. Relatively few studies were undertaken with the intention of testing the universality of (western) theories of cognitive behaviour. Research in South Africa has been dominated, furthermore, by the psychometric paradigm, although some interest as also been shown in the more experimental approaches to the study of cognition. Despite these limitations, there is sufficient literature from which to draw some conclusions regarding the nature of the psychological constructs underlying African performance on cognitive tests.

This chapter is prefaced by an historical sketch of events and is organized into three broad content areas:

1. The criterion-related validities of tests.

2. The moderating influence of environmental, dispositional, and other nontest variables on level of test performance.

3. The structure and patterning of cognitive abilities.

Although our concern is with Southern Africa, the considerable body of research findings from the rest of the continent, south of the Sahara, cannot be ignored. The distinction between “black” and “white” Africa is a political and not a cultural one. South Africa is fundamentally a “third world” nation with the majority of its inhabitants being subject to the same acculturative forces that operate elsewhere on the continent. We therefore feel justified in referring, where appropriate, to the African literature as a whole, the more so because there is unfortunately no contribution to this book from Central, West, or East Africa.