A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Communication Abilities: Some Effects of Age, Schooling, and Culture

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Abstract
Development of coding ability was studied in Indian villagers, schooled and unschooled, and American school children, at ages 6, 10, and 15. Children described items in an array and, at a later time, decoded both their own descriptions and the descriptions of others in their age/schooling/culture group. Two stimulus arrays were used: colors, which were familiar to Americans but not to Indians; and grains and seeds, which were familiar to Indians but not to Americans. On the color array, unschooled village children performed so poorly they could not decode their own names any better than the names of others, and little developmental change in accuracy was seen. Schooled village children, although scoring significantly lower than Americans, were similar to them in the superiority of self‐ to other‐decoding and in age‐related changes. On the grain array, unschooled villagers performed better than schooled villagers, and both village groups performed better than Americans. It was concluded that lack of schooling does not prevent development of out‐of‐context communication abilities, but unschooled children may manifest these abilities only in contexts of importance to them and not in other contexts. Village school children, like Americans, use these abilities over a wider range of contexts, relevant or not.