The SON tests might be appropriate. But I have no idea if they have been used in Africa before. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SON-tests

Hi Thomas,

Perhaps you could consider the Color Trails.

http://www4.parinc.com/Products/Product.aspx?ProductID=CTT

Trails is a test of executive function, for adults. You can get only one measure of executive function, and one of speed of processing from the trails. It's pretty limited in its scope of interpretation.

In the light of the Cattel-Horn-Carroll Theory, fluid intelligence is said to be culturally unbiased and can be measured with the Raven's Progressive Matrices (Raven, 2000).

Furthermore, the Reaction Time-Movement Time (RT-MT) can be used. Jensen(1980) used it in a culture-reduced study of intelligence.

Raven's may help to assess spatial reasoning performance nonverbally. There are advanced (difficult even for educated), standard, and color (easy) versions.

I can recommend the Nonverbal Index on the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children, second edition (K-ABC-II), ages 7-18.

There is also a Nonverbal Index for ages 3-6 on the K-ABC-II.

thank you very much for all you answers, at present i consider the UNIT as it has a broad age and IQ range....

Hi Thomas.  I piloted some neuropsych tests with West African refugees living in the US and found that it is really hard to find a "culture free" test.  One thing I would be wary of is staying away from any timed tests (e.g., Color Trails) as I found that participants were more deliberate than fast and that long duration times were not a function of cognitive deficits, as suggested by the scores, but instead a cultural difference in test taking style. 

MANY TESTS THAT PRESUMABLY MEASURE "NON-VERBAL" INTELLIGENCE HAVE POOR REFERENCE POINTS, AND DO NOT CORRELATE WELL WITH RECOGNIZED "GENERAL ABILITY" MEASURES SUCH AS THE WECHSLER SCALES. THEREFORE, IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO BE CONFIDENT ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE MEASURING. THAT SAID, THE RAVEN'S PROGRESSIVE MATRICES ARE ARGUABLY THE BEST MEASURE OF "g." THEY ARE AVAILABLE IN CHILD, ADULT, AND ADVANCED VERSIONS, SOLD BY A PUBLISHER IN THE UK. IMHO, THIS IS YOUR BEST BET; IT IS ALSO PRESUMABLY "CULTURE FREE," BUT I'M NOT SURE HOW THAT IS ESTABLISHED IF "TEST TAKING" IN GENERAL IS NOT PART OF ONE'S CULTURE.

AGAIN IMHO, I'M NOT SURE THAT "IQ" IS "THE" VARIABLE OF INTEREST IN EPILEPSY. I'M ASSUMING THAT YOU ARE EQUATING "NON-VERBAL" WITH NOT ORALLY EXPRESSIVE - A TEST THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE AN ACTIVE VERBAL REPLY. HOWEVER, THIS CAN BE MISLEADING, SINCE PEOPLE OFTEN USE VERBAL THINKING TO SOLVE PROBLEMS, EVEN WHEN NOT VERBALIZING A REPLY; STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT IN THE ABSENCE OF AN ACTIVE VERBAL REPLY, LANGUAGE NETWORKS ARE ACTIVATED ANYWAY; SIMILARLY, IT HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED THAT ON WORD LIST LEARNING TASKS, THE BEST LEARNERS ACTIVATE ANTERIOR RIGHT HEMISPHERE BRAIN REGIONS. . MOST IQ TESTS HAVE SEVERAL/MANY SUBTESTS, AND THESE SUBTESTS ALMOST ALWAYS REQUIRE MULTIPLE COMPONENT COGNITIVE PROCESSES AND ACTIVATE WHATEVER BRAIN NETWORKS ARE REQUIRED, DEPENDENT UPON TASK DEMANDS. I AM TEMPTED TO THINK THAT IN SEIZURE DISORDERS, WITH A SPECIFIC FOCUS OF IMPAIRMENT, SELECTIVE BRAIN NETWORKS WOULD BE AFFECTED, SO INTELLIGENCE TEST SUBTESTS WILL NOT NECESSARILY SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF IDENTIFYING SPECIFIC REGIONAL NETWORK INVOLVEMENT.  YOUR BEST MEASURES MIGHT BE THOSE TESTS THAT ARE RELATIVELY "PURE," THOSE MEASURES THAT ARE INTERPRETED AS PATHOGNOMONIC SIGNS, OR PERHAPS THOSE TESTS WITH A SKEWED DISTRIBUTION, THOSE THAT DO NOT FOLLOW THE PERFORMANCE DISTRIBUTION OF A "BELL-SHAPED CURVE."  SEE LEZAK, ALMOST ANY EDITION, FOR FURTHER EXPLANATION. THIS WILL BE FOUND IN THE "BASIC CONCEPTS" CHAPTERS OF THE BOOK. - LK

How about COLUMBIA test. I have been used it with non verbal Children with cerebral palsy.

Progressive matrices should be a good way to estimate "g" (CHC-model). The UNIT battery also has some useful elements. Perhaps you could take a look at some of the subtests from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children. Corsi block tapping test could also work. If you're interested in assessing fine motor functions as well you could take a look at the Perdue Pegboard Test and the Finger Tapping Test. 

I have some experience with testing low literate individuals from India with varying linguistic backgrounds. Often clinicians and patients did not speak the same language and used informal interpreters, or could just about manage basic communication. The Raven's Matrices were not perhaps as culture-fair as some others, in the sense that those with low education had more difficulty understanding what the task required. We however used them with educated individuals quite successfully, and they were rather convenient (minimal materials, can be administered to several people together if needed etc). I'm not sure of education levels in the sample you will be seeing. More frequently we used several other tests modified for the Indian population, such as the Binet-Kamat, and Bhatia's battery. Sometimes we had to rely on checklists of milestones, when IQ was too low to enable reasonable testing. We did often use the performance subtests of the WAIS which were modified for Indian use (the pictures on Pic Completion were more culturally relevant, etc). I don't know if you have the luxury of modification in this case. But maybe you might consider just a few subtests - the Block Design in my opinion is particularly good for a wide range of abilities. 

You might have already looked at the WHO-AIDS neuropsychiatric study in Africa? I know many neuropsychological tests were modified for use particularly in Africa, and more generally for lower literate populations.

You could try the C-TONI .. It's a test of non-verbal intelligence.

However the pictorial analogies may or may not be culturally appropriate. so need to use discretion. But geometric analogies are fine. Children & illiterate participants  I worked with were quite receptive .  

This is obviously an interesting discussion; I, for one, cannot find a readily agreed upon definition of "non-verbal." Do you mean does not require oral verbal expression? Do you mean implicit, instrumental learning, governed by d1-d2 "reward learning," with information non-accessible to conscious cognitive awareness or expression? Do you refer to information-integration category learning? Do you refer to any of the brain's multiple memory systems in which "knowledge" is demonstrated only by observing improvement in performance; do you refer to large scale brain system studies, which cannot even identify any of these artificially defined neuropsychological constructs such as "domains" which cannot even be validated through neuroscientific investigations? When you evaluate a person, how do you identify or control for the phenomenon of "silent speech" or how do you know whether explicit or implicit processes are involved? How do you account for these differences? No offense intended, but what are you trying to measure in "non-verbal", how do you operationalize this, how do you account for brain organization of cognition and behavior, with different tasks dependent upon different patterns of functional connectivity of large scale brain systems, and the recruitment of the regions of the "small world" hub regions within these systems that ultimately generate behavior/cognition? see www.humanconnectomeproject.org; see Cole, et al, 2012; Cortese, et al, 2012; Castellanos and Proal, 2012; Yeo, et al, circa 2011. So whatever you use to "test," what is the "anchor point" allowing you to know and understand what you are measuring? Are you relying upon the "face validity" of the test, which might not have any identifiable neuroanatomic underpinning? What are you actually trying to "get at," which to me, is neuroscientifically unclear, but then again, perhaps you are not interested in functional neuroanatomic underpinnings, but then, you aren't doing "neuropsychology," are you?

I definitely do not have experience working with rural African children. I just thought that even if non verbal tests are chosen, it is well advised to have an interpreter for setting the context, explaining the purpose of the assessment, being able to answer children's questions general as well as in relation to specific tasks. all the best for your very interesting project.