Cultural considerations in the use of the wechsler intelligence scale for children-fourth edition (WISC-IV)

This chapter focuses on the heterogeneity within racial or ethnic groups as a means to inform the thinking about individual and group differences in performance. While many of the issues described in this chapter, such as language proficiency, are applicable to individuals from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities, this chapter chooses to focus primarily on the ''Hispanic'' population, because it represents a particularly large segment of the world's population-that is, there are numerous Spanish-speaking countries around the world, including the United States. Ultimately the goal of this chapter is to raise issues and examples that foster individualized assessment practices with all schoolchildren who are evaluated with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition (WISC-IV). While an argument can be made that any ethnic group residing within a society or country may represent a heterogeneous group, the Hispanic population provides a particularly salient example. The panethnic label "Hispanic" fails to capture these unique attributes, and in reality is a term of convenience with little descriptive specificity to any given Hispanic individual. For some members of ethnic minority groups, the interplay of education and economics is particularly complex. While educational attainment to a large degree dictates and certainly facilitates income potential, it is also the case that socioeconomic advancement facilitates educational attainment. There are additional variables that impact the composition of a normative sample, with implications for group and individual comparisons of performance. Patterns of immigration to the United States are one such consideration and provide often overlooked data that should be considered in the norming process of psycho-educational and neuropsychological instruments.