The poor school performance among black children in South Africa is best understood by focussing on the generative mechanisms which underlie
performance. This research was undertaken within Pascual-Leone's
neo-Piagetian Theory of Constructive Operators, which models cognitive
functioning as a bilevel system of content-specific schemes and
situation-free silent operators. Of the seven silent operators posited,
Pascual-Leone is able to distinguish cognitive competence, or mental
capacity (structural M, or Ms), from learning (L structuring) which is
dependent upon environment. The M-construct is a reserve of mental
attentional energy which can be applied to task-relevant schemes to boost
their activation weights. The Compound Stimulus Visual Information
(CSVI) task was used to distinguish the amount of M-power subjects
employed in a given task (functional M, or Mf ), as well as the efficiency
with which they used this Mf. Children from the black township of
lndaleni, outside Richmond, Natal, South Africa, were selected. Thirty
subjects in each of four age groups, seven-, nine-, eleven-, and
thirteen-year-olds, were tested. The Children's Embedded Figures Test
(CEFT) and the Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM) test were
administered in groups. Two versions of the CSVI were given: the Free
Response (CSVI-FR) and the Tachistoscopic version. The latter was
analysed in terms of first look (CSVI-1STL), which gives an estimate of
Mf, and repeated looks (CSVI-TACH) which estimates the number of
attending acts made over the task. The CEFT was found not to distinguish
cognitive style in the sample. As the sample was of low socioeconomic
status and rural, it was argued that the subjects were predominantly field
dependent.Results were analysed for the total sample as one FD group.
Results showed eleven- and thirteen-year-old children's arousal
executives were increasingly poor (i.e., the eleven-year-olds brought one
unit less than their available M to the task.). Performance on the RSPM
showed a dramatic decline in percentile rank with age, which confirmed
these increasingly poor arousal executives. This concurs with a regular
cross-cultural Piagetian finding which shows no formal operational
thinking in certain cultures. All subjects evidenced poor temporal
executives (i.e., made fewer attending acts than predicted in task
analyses). In the CSVI-FR analysis It was shown that children employed
more efficient temporal executives as the stimulus became more complex,
but their maximum performance still did not reach the predicted level. The
results confirm patterns found among children from other disadvantaged
environments. Proposals are made for further research to isolate the
factors involved in the poor arousal executive strength of the present
sample, which conflicts with a previous finding that Zulu-speaking
children employ their full Ms.The findings are related to the poor
educational environment of the children and suggestions are made for
improving school performance by encouraging active problem solving. This
would focus first on maximising M arousal, afterwhich temporal
executives may be improved. Further, a warning is made to those who see
training as a useful method to improve performance, for this does not
maximise arousal and temporal executives within the child, but rather
reduces the demand of the task. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1987.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/6226 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Juckes, Timothy John. |
| Contributors | Miller, Ronald. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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