Assessment of cognitive abilities in multiethnic countries: The case of the Wolof and Mandinka in the Gambia

Jukes, Matthew; Grigorenko, Elena L.

doi:10.1348/000709909x475055

Cited by 21 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…Recent work on assessment of children in the region in a variety of more general areas of ability (A. Alcock, Holding, Mung'ala-Odera, & Newton, 2008;Holding, et al, 2004;Jukes & Grigorenko, 2010;Nampijja, et al, 2010) can also now be expanded to language assessments.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Alcock

Alibhai

2013

Neuropsychology of Children in Africa

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Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Alcock

Alibhai

2013

Neuropsychology of Children in Africa

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“…This, in turn, may also impact on item bias, which refers to differences in observed performance despite equal abilities on a particular skill based on participants' cultural or linguistic background. Cross-cultural studies have shown biases in task performance based on different language structures (Jukes and Grigorenko, 2010), and different levels of stimulus familiarity (Callaghan et al, 2012; Zuilkowski et al, 2016). For example, in an attempt to address item bias when adapting a neuropsychological test used in Western cultures to be accessible for the Indonesian population, Prado et al (2010) changed a picture stimulus of a “bunny” to a “chicken.” However, despite these modifications, young children were still unable to complete the assessment successfully (Abubakar et al, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In spite of these challenges, recent progress has been made in developing valid cognitive and motor assessments for use in specific developing countries, particularly in the fields of health and education (Jukes and Grigorenko, 2010). For example, cognitive assessments, including motor skills, executive function, and language abilities, have been developed specifically for Zambia (Serpell, 1974; Ezeilo, 1978; Fink et al, 2013), rural Kenya (Kitsao-Wekulo et al, 2012), Bangladesh (Khan et al, 2013), and Malawi (Gladstone et al, 2009, 2010) populations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These assessments are designed to be administered by trained assessors and usually involve observational checklists (e.g., Gladstone et al, 2009, 2010; Boyede et al, 2016), parental reports (e.g., Ngoun et al, 2012), or require a battery of specific resources (e.g., Jukes and Grigorenko, 2010). These methods, while insightful, can be expensive and timely to administer, and usually focus on measuring developmental milestones that typify early child development prior to school entry (Gladstone et al, 2009, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study

Pitchford

Outhwaite

2016

Front. Psychol.

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Assessment of cognitive and motor functions is fundamental for developmental and neuropsychological profiling. Assessments are usually conducted on an individual basis, with a trained examiner, using standardized paper and pencil tests, and can take up to an hour or more to complete, depending on the nature of the test. This makes traditional standardized assessments of child development largely unsuitable for use in low-income countries. Touch screen tablets afford the opportunity to assess cognitive functions in groups of participants, with untrained administrators, with precision recording of responses, thus automating the assessment process. In turn, this enables cognitive profiling to be conducted in contexts where access to qualified examiners and standardized assessments are rarely available. As such, touch screen assessments could provide a means of assessing child development in both low- and high-income countries, which would afford cross-cultural comparisons to be made with the same assessment tool. However, before touch screen tablet assessments can be used for cognitive profiling in low-to-high-income countries they need to be shown to provide reliable and valid measures of performance. We report the development of a new touch screen tablet assessment of basic cognitive and motor functions for use with early years primary school children in low- and high-income countries. Measures of spatial intelligence, visual attention, short-term memory, working memory, manual processing speed, and manual coordination are included as well as mathematical knowledge. To investigate if this new touch screen assessment tool can be used for cross-cultural comparisons we administered it to a sample of children (N = 283) spanning standards 1–3 in a low-income country, Malawi, and a smaller sample of children (N = 70) from first year of formal schooling from a high-income country, the UK. Split-half reliability, test-retest reliability, face validity, convergent construct validity, predictive criterion validity, and concurrent criterion validity were investigated. Results demonstrate “proof of concept” that touch screen tablet technology can provide reliable and valid psychometric measures of performance in the early years, highlighting its potential to be used in cross-cultural comparisons and research.

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“…Cultural and ethnic factors and their relationships with local socio-economic circumstances pose a unique set of challenges for studies of cognitive and brain development (see e.g. Jukes & Grigorenko, 2010;Reich et al, 2013;Zhan et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separating the effects of ethnicity and socio-economic status on sleep practices of 6- to 7-month-old infants

Tomalski

Moore

Ballieux

et al. 2016

Learning and Individual Differences

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Infant sleep undergoes significant re-organization throughout the first 12 months of life, with sleep quality having significant consequences for infant learning and cognitive development. While there has been great interest in the neural basis and developmental trajectories of infant sleep in general, relatively little is known about individual differences in infant sleep and the socio-economic and cultural sources of that variability. We investigated this using questionnaire sleep data in a large, unique multi-ethnic sample of 6–7 month-olds (n = 174), with families from South Asian ethnic groups in the UK (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) being especially well represented. Consistent with previous data from less variable samples, no effects of SES on sleep latency or nocturnal sleep duration emerged. However, perinatal risk factors and ethnic differences did predict daytime sleep, sleep fragmentation and sleep-onset time. While these results should be interpreted with caution due to several limitations, they likely demonstrate that even when socio-economic status and ethnicity are much less confounded than in previous studies, they have a surprisingly limited impact on individual differences in sleep patterns in young infants

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Assessment of cognitive abilities in multiethnic countries: The case of the Wolof and Mandinka in the Gambia

Abstract: Background. The use of cognitive tests is increasing in Africa but little is known about

Cited by 21 publications

References 50 publications

Language Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Language Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study

Separating the effects of ethnicity and socio-economic status on sleep practices of 6- to 7-month-old infants

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