Yoruba toddlers’ engagement in errands and cognitive performance on the Yoruba Mental Subscale

Abstract

Responsibility training is an essential component of child-rearing practices in several African societies. To inculcate responsibility, caregivers allocate their children household duties and send them on errands; these include (but are not limited to) fetching objects and purchasing items. Such errands foster the acquisition of cognitive, social, and economic competencies. In this paper, the relationship between the types of errands engaged in by Yoruba toddlers of southwest Nigeria and cognitive performance using an adapted version of the Bayley Mental Scales of Development, referred to as the Yoruba Mental Subscale, is examined. Findings revealed that children who engaged in purchasing items and retrieving specific objects for the caregiver had a significantly higher performance on the Yoruba Mental Subscale compared to children who did not engage in such errands. With regard to performance on the Bayley Mental Scales, findings revealed no significant association with the errands examined. The implications of these findings for cross-cultural research and early childhood education are discussed.

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