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Reaction times and intelligence: a comparison of Japanese and British children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2008

Richard Lynn  and
T. Shigehisa
Richard Lynn
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland
T. Shigehisa
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Tokyo Kasei-gakunin University, Japan
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Summary

Japanese and British 9-year-old children were compared on the standard progressive matrices and twelve reaction time parameters providing measures of simple and complex decision times, movement times and variabilities. The mean of the Japanese children on the progressive matrices exceeded that of the British children by 0·65 SD units and on the decision times component of reaction times by 0·50 SD units, suggesting that the high Japanese mean on psychometric intelligence is largely explicable in terms of the more efficient processing of information at the neurological level. Japanese children also showed faster movement times but, contrary to expectation, had greater variabilities than British children.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 409 - 416
Copyright
Copyright © 1991, Cambridge University Press

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