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Memory Performance and Socio‐Economic Status
Author(s) -
Herrmann Douglas,
Guadagno Mary Ann
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(199704)11:2<113::aid-acp424>3.0.co;2-f
Subject(s) - psychology , socioeconomic status , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , environmental health , medicine , population
Memory ability is affected by the physical, educational and health environments. The nature of these environments, in turn, differs across people with different socio‐economic status (SES). Thus, it would be expected that memory performance would vary systematically with SES. However, memory researchers have yet to examine the relationship between economic variables and memory performance. This paper reviews several literatures (medical, public health, IQ, sociological and memory) to assess the relationship—if any—of socio‐economic status to memory performance. The results of the review revealed that memory performance is strongly and directly correlated with SES. However, the results were not strong enough to determine whether the extent of this relationship differs across different kinds of memory. These results suggest that memory researchers should investigate further the nature of the relationship between SES and memory performance and take account of the possible influence of SES in the design and interpretation of memory data. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.