Title
Authors
York University
ABSTRACT
As part of a longitudinal study on cognitive abilities
assessment, 970 Grade-2 students from a largely
immigrant school board from the Greater Toronto Area
completed two measures of Mental Attentional Capacity
(M-capacity). M-capacity is a limited resource for
boosting activation of task-relevant schemes. It is a
causal factor in working memory and developmental
intelligence. Country of origin of the child and each parent
and first language of the child and each parent, plus
language currently spoken at home were combined to
represent the possible advantage of being Canadian-born
and English-speaking. The relationship among these
characteristics (named Home Advantage - HA in this
study) and M-capacity was tested using SEM. Results
indicate that HA significantly predicts performance only
for one of the tasks, supporting theoretical predictions on
the sources of variance for each of them.
METHOD
Demographic information was obtained through parent
self-report. It included country of origin of the child and
each parent and first language of the child and each
parent, plus language currently spoken at home. Figure 1
shows the distribution of these two dimensions in the
sample. Most parents were born overseas, whereas most
children were born in Canada. These dichotomous
indicators were used to construct the latent variable HA.
Two cognitive tasks (see TASKS) were group administered
to all participants. To construct the latent variable for the
FIT the task was deconstructed into 8 different indicators;
on each of the first 7 (R2-R8) items with only Relevant
figures on the left (see sample item Figure 2a) were
grouped by class (given by number of figures presented).
For the 8th indicator all the items that contained Irrelevant
figures on the left were grouped.
The latent variable for the WLT was constructed from the
shared variance of the two scores (Horizontal and Tilted,
see TASKS and Figure 2b).
Acknowledgements
Research was funded by a grant from Social Science and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (#410-2006-2325),
awarded to the first and third authors. We thank students & staff
of participating schools. We appreciate the assistance of C. Lee,
C. Balioussis, N. Friedland, A. Gorewich, M. Baloch, M. Arsalidou,
E. Verrilli, & S. Hitzig; and the advice of D. Flora.
Figure 1. Demographic distribution of the sample by country of
origin and language spoken
TASKS
In the Figural Intersections Task (FIT) 2 to 8 shapes are
presented discretely on the right and in an overlapping
configuration on the left (Figure 2a). The task is to find
the one area of intersection of all shapes from the right.
A paper and pencil version of Piaget & Inhelder’s Water
Level Task (WLT) was used. On bottle outlines (Figure
2b), participants draw a line to show where the top of the
water would be in a half-full bottle and mark an “x” where
the actual water would be. Two scores are calculated, one
for Horizontal/Vertical bottles and one for Tilted ones.
(a)
(b)
Figure 2. FIT (a) and WLT (b) sample items.
RESULTS
First, a measurement model for the Latent Variables HA
(“Home Advantage”), FIT and WLT was fitted using
Confirmatory Factor Analysis. Goodness-of-fit indicators
showed a good fit to the data.
Structural Equation Modeling (SEM, Figure 3) was used to
assess the influence of HA on each of the tasks (FIT &
WLT). Separate latent variables were constructed for each
task. The model showed good fit to the data. The
regression loading of WLT on HA was significant (.118,
SE=0.053), whereas FIT was not significantly predicted
by HA (.001, SE=0.038). The correlation between the two
M-measures was significant (.652, SE=0.046).
Figure 3. SEM Model of Home Advantage (HA) predicting
performance on the FIT and the WLT.
DISCUSSION
•M-capacity measures have been shown to be fairly free
of cultural bias when assessing cognitive abilities in
children from diverse populations 1,2.
•The present results confirm the use of M-measures as
non-biased in terms of country of origin and language
spoken, particularly the FIT.
•This finding has to be seen as partial because these are
self-report observations that were reduced to
dichotomous form as a simplification of the diversity of
the sample.
•Performance on WLT is known to be determined, not only
by M-capacity, but also by knowledge of physical
principles, and by resolution of perceptual conflicts
between saliency and experience 3.Cognitive style (FieldDependence/Independence) is linked to this last aspect.
•To better explain the social-cultural factors influencing
cognitive style (and assessment in general) future studies
may include parent involvement, parenting style,
language proficiency (both in heritage language and
English) and/or international samples in their country of
origin.
References
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