Intellectual Abilities and Processes: An Exploratory Study with Implications for Person-Teaching Method Interactions

Abstract

The present study examines some relationships pertaining to socioecenomic status (SES) and cognitive ability patterns of primary school children. Specifically the purpose of the study was to explore the relative merits of an hierarchical theory of two levels of cognitive ability, in contrast to a process scheme, positing two parallel modes of coding information. The subjects were 120 grade 4 primary school students. Analyses of the data are supportive of a simultaneous-successive process distinction and provide little confirmation (or the hierarchical model. Some suggestions for the apparent lack of support for the hierarchical model are presented and implications for future research are considered.

Simultaneous-Successive Syntheses, Planning Strategies and Education: A Process Approach toward an Integrated Theory

“…Das et al, 1979a, 1979bHunt, 1976). Moreover, even if successive processing were mostly "memory", a view which is contradicted by our most recent evidence (Snart, 1979), it would still involve input transformations (Lawson and Jarman, 1977;Molloy and Das, 1979). Lashley (1960) rejected a simple associative view of serial recall in his classic paper on serial order.…”

“…Relatedly, from the point of view of facilitating learning, ability information is only educationally useful if the ability and treatment interact, which they rarely do, because an inherent shortcoming of quantitative measures is that they mask the possibility of identifying qualitative differences in coding information (Biggs, 1969(Biggs, , 1973MacKenzie and Molloy, 1979;Molloy and Das, 1979). In contrast, a process model provides a viable alternative, as the processing strategies used by the individual learner are directly related to ways of structuring input.…”

“…hierarchical), the optimal process strategy, a Block 3 function, will vary depending on such factors as task demands, developmental level, and cultural experiences (Das, 1973a;Das and Molloy, 1975;Das, Kirby and Jarman, 1979b). THE MODEL Das (1972Das ( , 1973aDas ( , 1973b and his colleagues Das, Cummins, Kirby and Jarman, 1979a;Das, Kirby and Jarman, 1975;Das et a/., 1979b;Das, Leong and Williams, 1978;Das and Molloy, 1975;Cummins and Das, 1978;Jarman and Das, 1977;Kirby andDas, 1977, 1978;Molloy, 1973Molloy, , 1976Molloy and Das, 1979) have proposed that the Luria scheme of simultaneous and successive integration represents a parsimonious interpretation of cognitive task performance relative to the more traditional factors of memory and reasoning -the latter sometimes proferred in the guise of explanation. The model presented in detail by Das et 0/.…”

Sub‐cultural Differences on Selected Cognitive Tasks

“…The other tests included Figure Copying, Memory-for-Designs, Cross-Modal-Coding, Visual Short-Term-Memory (digits and objects), Colour Reading and Naming, Serial and Free Recall, and Digit Span METHOD (forward and backward). These measures and their processing characteristics are described elsewhere (see Das et al, 1979; Molloy and Das, 1979). With the exception of Raven's Matrices and Figure Copying, all tests were given individually.…”