In Danish psychologist Emil Kirkegaard’s blogpost Which test has the highest g loading?, he states that “(…) vocabulary is the single best way to measure intelligence in terms of g-loading. The chief other benefits of vocabulary tests is that they are fast to administer, and not stressful for the subjects.” But vocabulary tests also have cons, namely: “The chief disadvantage is that they are prone to bias, both with regards to age and non-native speakers.” He then goes on to extensively quote famous psychologist Arthur R. Jensen, of whom he, in another blogpost, wrote: “Pretty much everything is this field has already been said by Arthur Jensen somewhere in his 400+ papers and 5+ books.”

Jensen said one of those ‘everythings’, in this case the answer to the question why vocabulary tests are highly g-loaded and correlate highly with intelligence, in one of those 5+ books, namely his 1980 Bias in Mental Testing. The entire Jensen-quotation is given below (underlining and links where added by me):

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