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Regressions of offspring on midparent value for tests of specific cognitive abilities in Korea were considerably higher than those for Americans of Japanese ancestry or Americans of European ancestry tested in Hawaii. This greater parent-offspring resemblance in Korea may be due to the particular method of test administration or to an increased genetic variance resulting from assortative mating. The pattern of parent-child correlations for three relatively pure tests of spatial ability and for the spatial factor did not conform to that of a sex-linked recessive character.

The Identical Blocks Test of spatial ability was administered to subsamples of the two largest ethnic groups tested in the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition--Americans of European ancestry (171 families) and Americans of Japanese ancestry (98 families). Results of a hierarchical multiple regression analysis of family data and correlational analyses provided no evidence to support the hypothesis that spatial ability is influenced by a major, X-linked, recessive gene. Thus it appears that recent failures to replicate the sex-linkage pattern obtained by Stafford (1961) are not due to differences in the tests employed. We suggest that alternative explanations should be sought for the well-known sex difference in spatial ability.

As part of a large-scale family study in Hawaii, Americans of either Japanese or European ancestry were administered a battery of 15 cognitive tests. Principal component analyses (varimax rotations) yielded the same four major cognitive factors for each of the two ethnic groups, and these factors are defined by strikingly similar factor loadings.