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Effects of a cognitive acceleration programme on Year I pupils
Author(s) -
Adey Philip,
Robertson Anne,
Venville Grady
Publication year - 2002
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 - 10.1348/000709902158748
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , disadvantaged , developmental psychology , context (archaeology) , cognitive test , test (biology) , cognitive development , cognitive intervention , intervention (counseling) , paleontology , neuroscience , psychiatry , political science , law , biology
Background.Cognitive Acceleration has shown evidence of long‐term far transfer with young adolescents. This paper reports a new application of the principle to 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds in a disadvantaged inner city area. Aims.To investigate the effect of a cognitive intervention programme on the cognitive development of children in Year 1 of primary schools. Sample.Approximately 300 children in 14 Year 1 classes in 10 schools for the experimental group and 170 children in 8 classes in 5 matched schools as controls. Method.Quasi‐experimental pre‐test post‐test with experimental and matched control groups. One of the pre‐ and post‐tests was intended to probe for transfer. Children in experimental classes experienced a set of 29 activities designed to promote cognitive conflict and encourage social construction and metacognition over one school year. Results.The experimental group overall made significantly greater gains in cognitive development over the period of the experiment than the controls, in both direct (effect size 0.47) and transfer (effect size 0.43) tests, although when genders were considered separately, experimental boys' greater gains than controls did not reach significance. There was no interaction with various social and linguistic variables. Conclusion.In the context of this study, a cognitive intervention programme can have a significant immediate effect on the rate of children's cognitive development. Further work will investigate the longevity of this effect.