Concrete Operational Development in Three Cultures

Abstract

Berry's (1971) model of ecological functionalism is extended to Piagetian developmental psychology. It is predicted that the rate of development of concrete operations may be partly determined by ecological and cultural factors. In particular, if three subsistence-economy populations are placed on an ecocultural scale, with low food-accumulating, nomadic, hunting groups at one extreme, and high food-accumulating, sedentary, agricultur-alist groups at the other extreme, the former are expected to develop spatial concepts more rapidly than will the latter, whereas the sedentary group is expected to attain concepts of conservation of quantity, weight, and volume more rapidly than nomadic groups will. The model is largely supported by the results of a study involving 190 children (aged six to fourteen from three cultural groups: Canadian Eskimos, Australian Aborigines, and Ebrie Africans. The discussion centers on ambiguous results obtained in the age range eight to eleven years for the conservation tasks.

Neo‐piagetian Theories: Cross‐cultural and Differential Perspectives

“…It seems that even in a fairly acculturated community, the traditional value orientations that determine child rearing practices remain unchanged for a long time; in his research with more traditional groups of Australian Aborigines, Dasen ( , 1975) also attributed the slow acquisition of conservation concepts, relative to the spatial domain, to the value placed on spatial skills rather than on quantification.…”

Socialization for Competence: Cultural Models of Infancy

“…The cognitive apparatus of humans develops on the basis of experiences that are processed within the ecocultural context [cf. also Dasen, 1975;Serpell, 1979;Jahoda, 1982]. Competence as stressing primarily social skills grows in contexts where cooperation among the members of the family is crucial for surviving.…”

The Skill of Pictorial Perception: An Interpretation of Cross-Cultural Evidence

“…Another line of research which has shown a relation between ecocultural demands and performance on cognitive and perceptual tasks is that of Dasen (1975Dasen ( , 1977. This study used Piaget's tests of spatial concepts and conservation and found "the structural properties of the stages and their hierarchical ordering were verified in each sample'' (Dasen 1977: 190), while cross-cultural variations in the average age at which the stages were attained in different domains were predictable from a functional analysis of the eco-cultural settings.…”