Relationships between Verbal and Non-Verbal Abilities for Migrant Children and Australian Children of Low Socio-Economic Status: Similarities and Contrasts

Abstract

Previous research indicates that mean patterns of mental ability show striking differences between different ethnic groups. In this paper, some salient features of information processing on which there are likely to be differences between children of Australian born parents of low SES and children of migrant parents are discussed. An empirical study of these differences is described. The mean performance of the migrant children studied compared with children of low SES Australian born parents was found to be related to the balance between verbal and cognitive aspects of the task. The greater the cognitive demand for a given verbal requirement the better the performance of the migrant children relative to the children in the “Australian” group. Further, the intercorrelations between performances were found to be markedly different for the two groups. The results suggest that migrant children in particular may benefit from teaching which emphasises the pragmatic use of language to indicate desired discriminations and concepts.

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