The Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) was constructed by Raymond B. Cattell, PhD, DSc in an attempt to produce a measure of cognitive abilities that accurately estimated intelligence devoid of sociocultural and environmental influences. Scholars have subsequently concluded that the attempt to construct measures of cognitive abilities devoid of the influences of experiential and cultural conditioning is a challenging one. Cattell proposed that general intelligence (g) comprises both Fluid Intelligence (Gf) and Crystallized Intelligence (Gc). Whereas Gf is biologically and constitutionally based, Gc is the actual level of a person's cognitive functioning, based on the augmentation of Gf through sociocultural and experiential learning (including formal schooling). In addition to Gf and Gc, as Gregory John Boyle commented (p. 267), "At the second-stratum level, several major factors (Gf, Gc, Gm, Gps, Gr, Gv, Ga) have been well replicated in numerous studies....Gf is the constitutionally and endowed (innate) intellectual potential which interacts with environmental experience...to produce Gc."
Unlike the most widely used individual tests of cognitive abilities, such as the current editions of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale and the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scale, which report cognitive ability scores as "deviation IQs" with 15 IQ points corresponding to one standard deviation above or below the mean, Cattell built into the CFIT a standard deviation of 24 IQ points, thereby allowing for a greater spread of scores and concomitantly greater discrimination. This means that about 68.2 percent of test-takers would obtain IQ scores on the CFIT that lie somewhere between 76 and 124, while scoring between 85 and 115 on most other IQ tests.
Crystallized intelligence (Gc) refers to that aspect of cognition in which initial intelligent judgments have become crystallized as habits. Fluid intelligence (Gf) is in several ways more fundamental and is particularly evident in tests requiring responses to novel situations. Before biological maturity individual differences between Gf and Gc will be mainly a function of differences in cultural opportunity and interest. Among adults, however, these discrepancies will also reflect differences with increasing age because the gap between Gc and Gf will tend to increase with experience which raises Gc, whereas Gf gradually declines as a result of declining brain function.