University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 8PQ, UK.
University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 8PQ, UK; University of Roehampton, London SW15 5PU, UK.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2020 Jun;194:104734. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2019.104734. Epub 2020 Mar 18.
In the fields of education, sociology, and economics, there is a long-standing connection between socioeconomic status (SES) and school outcomes in a wide variety of cultural settings, but these studies have yet to examine the possible mediating effects of domain-general cognitive factors such as executive functions (EFs). Addressing this gap and building on evidence for links between EFs and numeracy, the current cross-cultural study used a large sample (N = 835) of 9- to 16-year-old children from Hong Kong and the United Kingdom to examine the independence and interplay of SES and EFs as predictors of numeracy skills. Our analyses yielded three key findings, namely that (a) EFs consistently predicted numeracy skills across sites and genders, (b) associations between SES and EFs differed by site and gender, and (c) associations between numeracy skills and SES/EFs differed by site and gender. Together with previous findings, our results suggest culture-specific associations among SES, EFs, and numeracy, indicating that cultural insights may enable impactful shifts in public policy to narrow the achievement gap between children from affluent and disadvantaged families.
在教育、社会学和经济学领域，社会经济地位（SES）与各种文化背景下的学校成绩之间存在着长期的联系，但这些研究尚未考察领域一般性认知因素（如执行功能（EFs））的可能中介作用。为了填补这一空白，并基于 EF 与计算能力之间联系的证据，本项跨文化研究使用了来自中国香港和英国的 9 至 16 岁儿童的大样本（N=835），考察了 SES 和 EF 作为计算能力预测指标的独立性和相互作用。我们的分析得出了三个关键发现，即：（a）EF 在各个地点和性别中均一致地预测了计算能力；（b）SES 与 EF 之间的关联因地点和性别而异；（c）计算能力与 SES/EF 之间的关联因地点和性别而异。与之前的发现一起，我们的结果表明 SES、EF 和计算能力之间存在特定于文化的关联，这表明文化视角可能会对公共政策产生重大影响，以缩小富裕家庭和贫困家庭孩子之间的成绩差距。
