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PRODUCT AND PROCESS IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: SOME COMPARATIVE DATA ON THE PERFORMANCE OF SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN IN DIFFERENT CULTURES
Author(s) -
PHILP HUGH,
KELLY M.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
british journal of educational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.557
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 2044-8279
pISSN - 0007-0998
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8279.1974.tb00779.x
Subject(s) - psychology , product (mathematics) , cognitive development , process (computing) , cognition , developmental psychology , task (project management) , computer science , mathematics , geometry , management , neuroscience , economics , operating system
S ummary . In the search for factors affecting the ‘educability’ of children, tasks derived from the theoretical positions of Piaget and Bruner were administered to children of primary school age in three cultures. The sample, of total size 1,536, was drawn from New South Wales, Australia, Papua, New Guinea and children of non‐English speaking migrants in Sydney, Australia. Instruments were designed or adapted to minimise difficulties of cross‐cultural application. The tasks were divided into two groups—‘product’ (getting it right) and ‘process’ (how it was done). Behaviours, representative of development according to the theories of both Piaget and Bruner, were found in all three cultures. The order of difficulty of the product tasks, with some minor exceptions, was the same for all three, whether the children had been to school or not. The Bruner process tasks presented a different picture. There were material differences from culture to culture in the order of appearance of various identifiable processes. As difficulty of task increased, the process commonly used by the children of each culture changed. With the most difficult tasks the children from all cultures tended to use the same process. Some implications of the findings are discussed.