Minority versus majority group performance on an aptitude test battery

Black students from two cities and Mexican American students, both male and female, showed small but consistent tendencies to perform better, relative to White groups, on three nontraditional measures; tests of inductive reasoning, spatial scanning, and associative memory. These measures showed somewhat less discrepancy between the groups than did tests of the more traditional verbal and mathematical aptitudes. The results seemed compatible with the suggestions of the Commission on Tests to expand the number of measures included in traditional testing programs. Other measures of these same aptitudes, and their validities, remain to be explored in this context.