Education and cognitive development: A natural experiment.

Abstract

Using an arbitrary cutoff date, school districts regulate which children will begin school. This natural experiment was used to examine effects of age- and schooling-related influences on memory and 3 levels of phonological segmentation in children who just made vs. missed the cutoff. Group comparisons over time permitted assessment of schooling influences and Age X Experience interactions. Short-term memory was enhanced by grade one schooling, with no evidence of an Age X Schooling interaction. For phonological segmentation, both schooling- and age-related influences appeared, with unique patterns for each level of segmentation. The cutoff method proved sensitive to important changes in cognitive skills during this age period. In many Western societies, the period from late preschool through early elementary school is characterized by widespread, perhaps qualitative, shifts in children's cognitive, social, and moral functioning. Collectively, the changes have been referred to as the 5-7 shift (White, 1965). In the intellectual realm, children's thinking has been described as becoming more logical (Piaget, 1960) and more abstract (Rogoff, 1981); memory performance improves as rehearsal and organizational strategies become more active (Bjorklund, 1987; Ornstein & Naus, 1978); language skills become more reflective and refined (Read & Schreiber, 1982); and increased metacognitive skills yield greater planning, control, and evaluation over the sequencing of cognitive acts (Case, 1985; White, 1965). Although their uniqueness may be challenged, the existence of major changes between ages 5 and 7 is not in dispute. However, the relative contribution of maturation versus experience (e.g., schooling) has not been resolved. For most of the past 2 decades, the maturationalist view has dominated theory and research. The work of Piaget and others (Case, 1985; Kagan, 1984) has emphasized regular, uniform, and seemingly universal changes in thinking across the age range that appeared internally driven and controlled by a maturational timetable. Nevertheless, recent findings have revealed that specific learning experiences may play a crucial role in the growth of selected cognitive skills. First, cross-cultural research has documented major differences between schooled and unschooled children in growth of perceptual and memory skills, concept development,