The fact of India's strong math skew likely needs explaining in light of your theory. Most (all?) of the subcontinent's writing systems are alphabetic. One possible explanation might be the diversity of languages, and students taking the test in languages that they speak less regularly. Or it could just be that the philosophy of education is just very different there from East Asia. Any thoughts on that? Regardless of the explanation, it's a clever theory and I'm always down for fanboying over Hangul.
1.) East Asian's appear have significantly higher nonverbal IQ scores vs verbal scores. And I believe this spread is true of Koreans and Japanese too. This being so, it seems to me that the real question is why Korean and Japanese scores skew the way they do; Chinese scores are anomalous in the region, but are consistent with the ability profiles of East Asians.
2.) From a historical standpoint, the imperial examination was a powerful filter. I would guess that the lineages most likely to survive and proliferate are those that were able to consistently produce people who could pass the exam. That being so, it's somewhat surprising that China has a nonverbal skew. The imperial exam was almost entirely a test of verbal reasoning -- of one's ability to master difficult Confucian literary works.
"Notably, while Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are related languages,"
Who told you this?! I really don't mean to be rude, but this is extremely wrong! They share some vocabulary due to borrowing, but they are NOT related in the way English and French are. In the case of Chinese and the other two, it's not even close!
The fact of India's strong math skew likely needs explaining in light of your theory. Most (all?) of the subcontinent's writing systems are alphabetic. One possible explanation might be the diversity of languages, and students taking the test in languages that they speak less regularly. Or it could just be that the philosophy of education is just very different there from East Asia. Any thoughts on that? Regardless of the explanation, it's a clever theory and I'm always down for fanboying over Hangul.
Two things:
1.) East Asian's appear have significantly higher nonverbal IQ scores vs verbal scores. And I believe this spread is true of Koreans and Japanese too. This being so, it seems to me that the real question is why Korean and Japanese scores skew the way they do; Chinese scores are anomalous in the region, but are consistent with the ability profiles of East Asians.
2.) From a historical standpoint, the imperial examination was a powerful filter. I would guess that the lineages most likely to survive and proliferate are those that were able to consistently produce people who could pass the exam. That being so, it's somewhat surprising that China has a nonverbal skew. The imperial exam was almost entirely a test of verbal reasoning -- of one's ability to master difficult Confucian literary works.
"Notably, while Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are related languages,"
Who told you this?! I really don't mean to be rude, but this is extremely wrong! They share some vocabulary due to borrowing, but they are NOT related in the way English and French are. In the case of Chinese and the other two, it's not even close!