SCHOOLING & COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: A NATURAL EXPERIMENT

该项目考察了学校教育对认知能力的影响。 通过利用一种“自然实验”，即所谓的“学校分流”来发展。 每年，学校董事会都会宣布，那些出生日期为 在某个指定日期之前将被允许上幼儿园或上年级 一个，而其他刚刚错过分界线的孩子将不被允许 进入。通过选择出生日期集中在以下日期的孩子-- 在截止日的一侧，两组儿童可以有效地等同 在某种目标心理技能或过程上。比较的程度 目标技能从学年开始到学年结束的变化 (岗位前设计)在刚刚成功与错过截止日期的儿童中 允许直接评估就学经历和 这项技能的成长。使用这种方法的一系列研究将 考察一年级教育对认知能力的广泛影响 技能，包括记忆策略，语言处理，因果推理， 叙事理解、逻辑运算和算术 解决问题。这些研究的结果将(1)产生更大的 认识学校教育体验对提升认知能力的作用 增长；(2)评估学校教育的影响有多广泛或有限 基本认知技能；(3)建立丰硕的学校分界点 阐明认知变化的重要来源的方法论 在开学初期的加工过程中。

The project examines the influence of schooling on cognitive development by exploiting a "natural experiment", termed school cutoff. Each year school boards proclaim that those children whose birth-dates precede some specified date will be allowed to go to kindergarten or grade one, while other children who just miss the cutoff will not be allowed entry. By choosing children whose birth-dates cluster closely on--either side of the cutoff date, two groups of children can be effectively equated on some target psychological skill or process. Comparing the degree of change in the target skill from beginning to end of the school year (pre-post design) in the children who just make versus miss the cutoff permits direct assessment of the impact of the schooling experience an growth of that skill. A series of studies using this methodology will examine the influence of grade one schooling on a broad range of cognitive skills, including memory strategies, language processing, causal reasoning, narrative comprehension, logical operations, and arithmetic problem-solving. Findings from these studies will (1) yield greater understanding of the power of the schooling experience to enhance cognitive growth; (2) evaluate how extensive or limited is schooling's influence an basic cognitive skills; (3) establish the fruitfulness of the school cutoff methodology in elucidating important sources of change in cognitive processing during the early school years.