The Role of Culture in Children and Young People’s Intelligence Scales. WAIS and WISC Tests and their Italian Revisions (1956-2012)

The first Wechsler­-Bellevue forms (1939-­1946) were translated into Italian in 1957. The WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 1955) and the WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, 1949) were introduced in Italy in 1974 and 1956 respectively. The WAIS­-R (1981) was edited in Italian in 1993 and the WAIS-­IV (2008) in 2013. The WAIS­-III (1997) never received an Italian edition since the WAIS-­R had just been translated. With the exception of the first WISC, the delay in the revisions and publication in Italian has been a constant. These delays mean that, for example, in 1997 adults (over the age of 16) were tested using a scale produced in the USA in 1955 and published in Italy in 1974: given the rapid social and cultural changes that occurred during the second half of the XX century, this may have impacted on the cultural element of the tests. The aim of this essay is to identify the ways in which the Italian verbal and cultural subtests (particularly the Information and Comprehension subtests) differed from the American version; and to show the attention increasingly paid to cultural diversity.