Abstract: This paper is intended to explore the differences in the intellectualdevelopment of school boys and girls of Li and Han nationalities onHainan Island and the causes that lead to the differences. The subjectsconsist of 120 11 to 15-year-old such schoolchildren in Baoting and Tongza,two culturally different areas on Hainan Island. Four tests were used, i.e, the Reven's progressive matrice test, perceiving ability test, memoryability test and thinking ability test. We also applied individual trait qu-estionaires and family environment questionaires. The results indicated that there were significant differences in the gene-ral intelligence, perceiving ability, memory ability and thinking ability ofthe schoolchildren in the two areas. These differences were correlated tocultural differences and individual traits, but not to ethnical differences.

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