| In this thesis, I present the findings of a preliminary investigation into the relationship between environmental variables (affordances) and performance on the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) within a Kenyan sample. A total of 475 students in their third year of high school participated in the study. The students were sampled from diverse environments within Kenya. We found that environmental variables such as access to textbooks, test frequency, access to Westernised facilities, parental values, parental education, language proficiency and neighbours' occupations were positively related to SPM scores. We also found that all tested groups of Kenyan students performed at superior levels in comparison to their hypothesised performance in existing literature. Indications from this research are that normative studies should take account of influential environmental affordances of cognitive ability tests. In addition, this research raises questions about the validity of reported norms for non-Western populations from developing countries. |
