Conservation in Community School Children in Papua new Guinea

Abstract

Three hundred and thirty‐nine primary level boys and girls from the Jimi Valley area of the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea were tested for conservation of four concepts, number, length, quantity, and area. Schooling, age and sex were related to conservation with some concepts, and there were interaction effects between schooling and age. When compared with other studies the results suggest that there may be considerable differences between language‐culture groups within Papua New Guinea, and that the Jimi children themselves show a lag of several years, a lag which increases with the difficulty of the concept tested, in achieving the concepts tested when compared with children from more developed countries.

Conservation in Community School Children from the Milne Bay and Morobe Provinces of Papua New Guinea

“…The data support previous studies (Lancy 1978;Philp and Kelly 1974;Shea and Yerua 1980) which show success on conservation tasks in Papua New Guinean children often related to school grade, and age, in primary level school children. Grade effects are much more common in Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 18:49 10 August 2015 the present study than age effects.…”

“…Previous studies o f cognitive development in Papua New Guinea (PNG) using a Piagetian approach (Jones 1973(Jones , 1974Kelly 1971aKelly , 1971tr, 1978Kelly and Philp 1975;Lancy 1978;Lewis and Mulford 1974;Kelly 1974, 1977;Price and Nidue 1974;Rawlinson 1974;Shea and Yerua 1980) have suggested marked differences between Papua New Guinean groups tested and groups from more developed countries, and differences within PNG related to linguistic-cultural background. While plausible explanations related to differences in background experiences have been offered for the apparent lag in the performance of some PNG groups, no single explanation has as yet been adequately tested.…”

“…Shea et al Conservation in Papw New Guinen to account for the differences between PNG linguistic-cultural groups. In the latter case it seems that sex, schooling, and age are sometimes related to ability to perform on Piagetian problem-solving tasks, the latter two variables inevitably in interaction (e.g., Shea and Yerua 1980). However, linguistic-cultural differences may persist over and above these effects and a complete understanding of the way in which cognitive skills develop may require a more sophisticated analysis of languages and culture than has so far been available, and which is foreshadowed by Lancy ( 1977,1978).…”

The Bender Gestalt Visual Motor Test in Papua New Guinea

“…with Western norms could lead to serious errors of diagnosis in PNG. In particular, individual testing using Piagetian procedures indicates that even with schooled children there is a delay of some years in achieving levels of performance indicating concrete and formal operational thinking (Shea 1978a(Shea , 1978bShea and Yerua 1980;Shea et al 1981). The delay is shortest with the simpler tests of conservation (e.g., Length and Number) and longest, being up to six or seven years, with more difficult conservation tasks (e.g., Area) and tests of formal operational thinking (e.g., principles of the balance).…”

Conservation in Community School Children From the Madang, Southern Highlands, and North Solomons Provinces of Papua New Guinea

“…Highlands children can be seen to be relatively disadvantaged in these experiences. However, recent studies showing that Highlands children are actually superior to other groups on some tasks, and that the quantity and quality of schooling, and sometimes even a child's sex, influence cognitive performance in Papua New Guinean groups (Lancy 1978;Shea and Yerua 1980;Shea et al 1981), suggest that explanations must give attention to several fairly specific aspects of children's experience. Ultimately such explanations must be based on detailed information about specific linguistic-cultural groups in Papua New Guinea.…”