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Since many decades, standardized test batteries have been developed to assess cognitive abilities. Within the educational framework, they help to identify children that need extra support. However, many of the tests contain cultural- and language loaded items and task instructions and are thus not adapted to multicultural and multilingual populations such as in Luxembourg. Indeed, the children’s language proficiency in the test language might impact task comprehension and task performance of children who do not speak the test language as a native language independent of the cognitive potential. Therefore, McCallum (2003) advises to use nonverbal intelligence tests to assess cognitive abilities of linguistically and culturally diverse individuals. The aim of this study is to develop a fair test of cognitive abilities for multilingual third graders. Based on the existing models, we first identified three broad abilities: fluid intelligence, visual processing, and short-term memory. To adequately assess these abilities, we then devised 12 specific subtests with a total of 445 items. To give culture- and language fair instructions, we created for each subtest animated videos. We will present the theoretical framework upon which the test battery is based, show example items, and explain the methodology that we will apply to validate the test.
