Schooling, Environment, and Cognitive Development: A Cross-Cultural Study

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Abstract
The influence of schooling and genreal environmental conditions were investigated on the development of memory and cognitive skills in young children. The subjects were 824 5 and 6 yr old children living in jungle villages and in slum settlements of Lima, Peru. Half of the children in both the jungle and city were Mestizo, and half were Quechua Indians. Some 6 yr olds of each cultural group and in each location attended school; others did not. Memory tasks were presented in different modes of representation, i.e., verbal, pictorial and enactive; and cognitive tasks in concrete and abstract versions. A sample of parents in each group was interviewed concerning environmental conditions. Samples of upper-middle-class children in Lima and poor children in Detroit [USA] were tested to assess the generality of the findings. Attendance at school was related to improvement in performance on all tasks. Improvement was equivalent for both locations, both cultural groups and each social class. Attendance at school was accompanied by reduced within-group variability on some tasks and by greater differentiation of cognitive processes within children. Location and cultural group interacted differentially by task according to a complex pattern of relations. There were no indications that the organization of memory or cognitive processes differed as a function of social class, age, location or cultural group. Children''s opportunities to acquire specific memory and cognitive skills from schooling and from their general experience in a particular environment were discussed.

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