Cognitive Development of Two Groups of School Children Selected from Two Subcultures of India

Cognitive processes are the higher mental processes that involve knowledge and how people use their knowledge during the course of their development. The present study aims at exploring cognitive development of two groups of primary school children selected from two subcultures from the eastern part of India, namely, West Bengal and Tripura. The study wants to find out the pattern of relationship of academic achievement with planning, attention, simultaneous and successive processes of information processing; and the effect of gender and culture on it. Data were collected from 99 class IV primary school children (45 boys and girls from West Bengal; and 54 boys and girls from Tripura). Achievement test for arithmetic and language developed by the author and Cognitive Assessment System of Naglieri and Das (1997) were used. Findings of the study indicate that academic achievement is significantly and positively related with planning, attention and information processing processes, but the pattern is somewhat different for the two cultures. Two-way ANOVA results reveal significant effect of culture on one’s cognitive development i.e. academic achievement, planning, simultaneous and successive information processing. Significant interaction effects of culture and gender were observed on achievement, planning and attention. Girl students of West Bengal performed better than the other students. It may be that the teachers of this school gave more care and attention to the students; and the ability level of the students were also much better than the other students. Limitations of the study were also discussed.