THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOLING ON ADULT RECALL OF FAMILIAR STIMULI: A STUDY IN GHANA*

Several studies have shown the influence of schooling on a variety of cognitive skills. However, since the tasks employed were nearly always derived from the school setting, such findings provide no adequate answer to the following question: given a cognitive task with which schooled and unschooled subjects have had equal experience, does schooling still have an effect? Opposing views are held about this question, and the aim of the present study was to contribute towards answering it. Twenty-four schooled and 24 unschooled subjects, evenly divided by sex within each group, were given a recall task based on an indigenous game equally familiar to all of them. The task involved positions, numbers, and combinations of both. The performance of schooled subjects was very significantly superior on all aspects of the tasks. With regard to position there was an interaction indicating that women's performance was particularly enhanced by schooling, but this was not the case with numbers. Results thus support the view that schooling does have a general effect not necessarily mediated by specific experience. Moreover, in the light of the proportion of variance accounted for among different component tasks, it is suggested that a major effect of schooling might be an increased ability to process complex information.