Child Development Theories and Examples

Methods For Assessing The Cognitive Effects Of Literate Practices

If this characterization of the functioning of literate practices in mental life is correct, most traditional methods for assessing literacy effects will need to be revised. Consider one assessment strategy used often in the past: The researcher constitutes a group with equal numbers of illiterates and literates and tests all of them on some cognitive task, such as recalling a long list of words. All subjects perform the task in the same way, with no access to literate tools such as pencil and paper. After statistically controlling for factors such as intelligence, age, and social background, the researcher assesses whether there is any residual effect of literacy on performance. To date, the results of such traditional studies have been disappointing, typically showing no, or only modest, effects of literacy (Scribner and Cole, 1981).
In hindsight this failure is not surprising because the studies do not assess the right skills. First, subjects performing the tasks are denied access to the literate tool kit during their performance. Unable to use the external tools of literacy, they are denied environmental support for their literate skills, which typically require operations with external representational devices.
As a result, the main effects of literacy are at best severely attenuated. Second, the research addresses basic cognitive abilities such as recall. Literacy effects that do not permanently amplify such basic abilities go undetected. Third, the major comparison treats illiterates and literates as homogeneous classes, ignoring the tremendous differentiation within the class of literates. In particular, many literates have little exposure to the literate skills most critical to the modem knowledge explosion—the practices that institutionalized nonlocal integration and systemic analysis.
Figure 3-4 shows the range of conditions needed to assess the cognitive effects of literate practices in children or adults. Subjects need to be differentiated according to their literacy status, as shown in the top row. Pre literates are members of cultures that lack any literate practices, while illiterates are aliterate members of cultures rich in literate practices. This distinction permits assessment of whether some cognitive effects of literate practices diffuse within a culture to those who have not actually learned enough to be literate. Nominal literates have learned the basics about using an external representational system but not the practices that promote non local integration and systemic analysis, while advanced literates have mastered some of those practices. This distinction allows assessment of the effects of the advanced literacy skills related to the modem knowledge explosion.