Meng Hu

• The University of Hong Kong

Vocabulary is one of the best measures of general intelligence (g). However, readily available English vocabulary tests are often based on outdated words or are proprietary. To remedy this problem and to provide a large item pool for computerized adaptive testing (CAT), we sought to construct a new English vocabulary test. We constructed a total of...

New genomic technologies allow the apportionment of individuals' genotyped DNA into admixture proportions traceable to historically isolated biogeographic ancestry (BGA) groups such as African, European, and Amerindian. These BGA admixture proportions have proven valuable in a wide range of recent epidemiological research. This paper performs a met...

This study investigates whether the magnitude of the Black-White difference in average SAT scores decreases as parental education increases, consistent with the prediction of the environmental hypotheses. Based on various datasets (BPS, NPSAS:UG, ELS:02, NELS:88) quite the opposite was found. The differences magnify as parental education increases,...

In Canada, concerns persist regarding the academic underperformance among historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups. Extensive research has been conducted on the academic achievements of Aboriginal communities, but there’s a noticeable lack of focus on longstanding Afro-descendant populations. Our study aims to address this gap by examinin...

Structural racism has often been invoked to explain observed disparities in social outcomes, such as in educational attainment and income, among different American racial/ethnic groups. Theorists of structural racism typically argue that racial categories are socially constructed and do not correspond with genetic ancestry; additionally, they argue...

Introduction: There are well-known cognitive ability differences between socially-identified racial/ethnic groups in the United States. Ameliorating these differences is considered a top grand challenge for the American social sciences. However, reducing these achievement gaps requires a better understanding of the nature of these group differences...

The psychometric properties of the Wordsum vocabulary test across race and gender groups has not been studied yet. Taking advantage of a large sample of American adults from the General Social Survey (GSS), the Differential item/test functioning (DIF/DTF) were evaluated across gender and racial groups by using Item Response Theory (IRT). Two items...

Few studies have examined the effect of the adoptive parents’ race on the adopted adolescent’s achievement test scores. Because there are differences in education levels across races among parents, one wonders whether parents’ race predicts the adolescent’s ability after accounting for parent education. The current study investigates the effect of...

Extensive research has been conducted on the effect of mothers’ socialization on their children’s cognitive test scores. But less is known about the relation between mothers’ race/ethnicity and the performance of children from interracial families. It has been proposed by Willerman et al. (1974) that cognitive scores of interracial children will be...

This report examines the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 data. Self-reported European ancestry among Black Americans is found to have a positive yet moderate correlation with cognitive ability. Of the 2935 screener-identified African Americans, 53 had self-reported ancestry from a specific European ethnicity. This group had an advantage o...

Black and Hispanic children in the United States have lower mean cognitive test scores than White children. The reasons for this are contested. The test score gap may be caused by socio-cultural factors, but the high heritability of g suggests that genetic variance might play a role. Differences between self-identified race or ethnicity (SIRE) grou...

Black and Hispanic children in the United States have lower mean cognitive test scores than White children. The reasons for this are contested. The test score gap may be caused by sociocultural factors, but the high heritability of g suggests that genetic variance might play a role. Differences between self-identified race or ethnicity (SIRE) group...

Little research has dealt with intragroup ancestry-related differences in intelligence in Black and White Americans. To help fill this gap, we examined the association between intelligence and both color and parent-reported ancestry using the NLSY97. We used a nationally-representative sample, a multidimensional measure of cognitive ability, and a...

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the importance of using multilevel regression when analyzing cohort data. To show this, I analyze the Black-White difference in Wordsum scores by cohorts and by survey years, using the General Social Survey (GSS). Replicating Huang & Hauser's (2001) findings, I find a substantial narrowing of the difference...