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Socio‐economic status, social class and memory performance: a critical response to Herrmann and Guadagno (1997)
Author(s) -
Richardson John T. E.
Publication year - 1998
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(1998120)12:6<593::aid-acp579>3.0.co;2-p
Subject(s) - psychology , social memory , ethnocentrism , social psychology , prestige , cognitive psychology , context (archaeology) , task (project management) , social class , social stratification , developmental psychology , cognitive science , social science , sociology , linguistics , paleontology , philosophy , management , political science , law , economics , biology
Herrmann and Guadagno (1997) reviewed evidence concerning the relationship between memory performance and socio‐economic status (SES). As a measure of social stratification, SES is narrow and ethnocentric, and it ignores the role of social prestige, power and status. The selection of research for quantitative analysis and the measure of effect size used by Herrmann and Guadagno are criticized. Across the available corpus of studies, there is a highly significant relationship between SES and memory performance, but this varies systematically from one task to another and between different research studies using the same task. This indicates that the effects of SES on memory are mediated by the content and the context of learning. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.