Testing for the Effects of Schooling on Memory in an Ecocultural Setting

Abstract

The present study examines the recall performance of school and non-school-going children in a natural setting using, as the task, a card game called 'call' quite popular in rural Orissa. Eighteen school and 18 non-school-going children of grade six from a rural area participated in this card game which allowed the experimenter to obtain estimates of immediate and delayed recall performance for each subject. There was practically no difference between the school and non-school-going children in respect of their overall memory competence including immediate and delayed recall. The findings suggest that when non-school children are provided with a task situation that spontaneously activates their memory potential, they perform as well as their school-going peers.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Atkinson, R.C. and Shiffrin, RM (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In K.W. Spence and J.T. Spence (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in theory and research (Vol. 2). New York: Academic Press.

Brown, A.L. (1977). Development, schooling and the acquisition of knowledge about knowledge. In R.C. Anderson , RJ. Spiro and W.E. Montague (Eds.), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge . Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Charlesworth, W.R. (1976). Human intelligence as adaptation: An ethological approach. In L.B. Resnick (Ed.), The nature of intelligence. New York: Erlbaum.

Cole, M. , Gay, J. , Glick, J.A. and Sharp, D.W. (1971). The cultural context of learning and thinking . New York: Basic Books.

Cole, M. and Scribner, S. (1977). Cross-cultural studies of memory and cognition . In R.V. Kail and J.W. Hagen (Eds.), Perspectives on the development of memory and cognition. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Dash, U.N. and Das, J.P. (1984a). Development of concrete operational thought and information coding in schooled and unschooled children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2, 63-72.

Dash, U.N. and Das, J.P. (1984b). Cognitive development in schooled and nonschooled children: Evidence from cross-cultural studies. Journal of Social and Economic Studies, 1(2), 191-210.

Dash, U.N. and Das, J.P. (1987). Development of syllogistic reasoning in schooled and nonschooled children. Indian Psychologist, 4(1), 53-63.

Jahoda, G. (1981). The influence of schooling on adult recall of familiar stimuli: A study in Ghana. International Journal of Psychology, 16, 59-7 1.

10.

Laboratory Of Comparative Human Cognition. ( 1979). What is cultural about cross-cultural cognitive psychology ? Annual Review of Psychology, 30, 145-172.

11.

Mack, J.E. (1976). A prince of our disorder: The life of T.E. Lawrence . Boston: Little Brown & Co.

12.

Mandler, J.M. , Scribner, S. , Cole, M. and Deforest, M. (1980). Cross-cultural invariance in story recall. Child Development, 51, 19-26.

13.

Rogoff, B. (1981). Schooling and the development of cognitive skills . In H.C. Triandis and A. Heron (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (Vol. 4). Boston : Allyn & Bacon.

14.

Sharp, D. , Cole, M. and Lave, C. (1979). Education and cognitive development: The evidence from experimental research. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 44(1-2, Serial No. 178).

15.

Stevenson, H.W. , Parker, T. , Wilkinson, A. , Bonnevaux, B. and Gonzalez, M. (1978). Schooling, environment, and cognitive development: A cross-cultural study. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 43(3, Serial No. 175).

16.

Wagner, D.A. (1974). The development of short-term memory and incidental memory: A cross-cultural study. Child Development, 45, 389-396.

17.

Wagner, D.A. (1978). Memories of Morocco: The influence of age, schooling, and environment on memory. Cognitive Psychology, 10, 1-28.

18.

Wagner, D.A. (1981). Culture and memory development. In H.C. Triandis and A. Heron (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural psychology (Vol. 4). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.