Mode of Instruction and Memory Test Performance

Abstract

Cross-cultural literature suggests that schooling's effect on cognitive test performance is due to school's reliance on instruction using language removed from its everyday context, in contrast with informal instruction using demonstration of skills. The present study takes advantage of variability in use of verbal instruction and demonstration by mothers teaching their 9-year-olds, in order to test the relation of mode of instruction to memory test performance. In study 1, with 31 children from a society (Highland Mayan) in which much of children's learning occurs through observation, maternal mode of instruction was highly predictive of performance on two verbal memory tests. However, mode of instruction was unrelated to performance on two scene memory tests. Thus, mode of instruction has specific predictiveness to verbal memory skills but not memory performance in general. Study 2 replicated study 1 with 30 U.S. children, and found that the U.S. mothers provided more verbal instruction and less demonstration than the Mayan mothers. In study 2, mode of instruction was not predictive of the children's memory test performance. This may be due to the U.S. children's exposure to a high level of verbal instruction rather than demonstration, a threshold above which further variation is unpredictive. The question whether exposure to verbal instruction vs. demonstration accounts for some of the demonstrated effects of schooling on test performance is answered with a qualified "yes": There is a relationship between maternal mode of instruction and test performance but only for tests relying on verbal material and for children whose exposure to verbal instruction is not as extreme as in Western culture. The effect is not general, and is contextually influenced.