Conservation of Distance in African Children from Rural and Urban Schools

Abstract

This paper contains a review of the small literature on the association of rural/urban residence and attainment of distance conservation among African children and an account of a study of the age at which children in Sierra Leone, West Africa, attain conservation. 150 children from the ages of 8 to 18 years, from rural and urban schools, were assigned Piagetian tasks to judge their conservation of distance. Analysis showed that at 11 + years, conservation was observed and that there was no significant difference between the urban sample and the rural one. Several confounds in the data limit conclusions but use of the children's own languages was possible in some experiments.

Investigation of worldview theory in a south african context

“…Culturally based cognition may relate to specific cognitive abilities or to differences in holistic/visual versus verbal/analytic thought patterns. As an example of specific ability, Sawyerr (1992) investigated conservation of distance in African children and found it to be different from that of European and U.S. children. As another example of a specific ability, Fisher (1993) investigated African students' views of temperature and the particle nature of matter and compared her results to work done in the U.S. and Great Britain.…”