SCHOOLING & COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: A NATURAL EXPERIMENT

该项目研究了学校教育对认知能力的影响。 通过利用一种“自然实验”，即所谓的学校截止。 每年学校董事会都宣布， 在某个指定日期之前，将被允许去幼儿园或年级 一个，而其他孩子谁只是错过了截止将不被允许 入境 通过选择出生日期相近的孩子， 在截止日期之前，两组儿童可以有效地等同起来， 目标心理技能或过程。 比较程度 目标技能从学年开始到结束的变化 （前-后设计）在刚刚达到与错过截止值的儿童中 允许直接评估学校教育经验的影响， 这种技能的增长。 使用这种方法进行的一系列研究将 研究一年级教育对广泛的认知能力的影响， 技能，包括记忆策略，语言处理，因果推理， 叙述理解、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 了解学校教育经验的力量，以提高认知 （2）评估学校教育的影响力有多广泛或有限， 基本的认知技能;（3）建立学校截止的成果 阐明认知变化的重要来源的方法 在早期的学校里处理。

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.