Concrete Operational Development in Three Cultures

Abstract

Berry's (1971) model of ecological functionalism is extended to Piagetian developmental psychology. It is predicted that the rate of development of concrete operations may be partly determined by ecological and cultural factors. In particular, if three subsistence-economy populations are placed on an ecocultural scale, with low food-accumulating, nomadic, hunting groups at one extreme, and high food-accumulating, sedentary, agricultur-alist groups at the other extreme, the former are expected to develop spatial concepts more rapidly than will the latter, whereas the sedentary group is expected to attain concepts of conservation of quantity, weight, and volume more rapidly than nomadic groups will. The model is largely supported by the results of a study involving 190 children (aged six to fourteen from three cultural groups: Canadian Eskimos, Australian Aborigines, and Ebrie Africans. The discussion centers on ambiguous results obtained in the age range eight to eleven years for the conservation tasks.

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