Resumo

MATUTE VILLASENOR, Esmeralda et al. EFFECTS OF PARENTS' EDUCATIONAL LEVEL, SCHOOL TYPE AND GENDER ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF ATTENTION AND MEMORY. rev.latinoam.psicol. [online]. 2009, vol.41, n.2, pp.257-276. ISSN 0120-0534.

Information about the influence of environmental factors on the development of attention and memory is scarce. This study analyzed the relationship between parents' educational level, school type and sex on the development of attention and memory. Four hundred and seventy six children (age 5 to 16 years) of public (PuS) and private schools (PrS) participated. The sample was divided in two age groups: G1, age 5 to 8 years and G2, age 9 to 16 years. Attention and memory sub-tests from the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil-ENI (Matute, Rosselli, Ardila and Ostrosky, 2007) were analyzed. There was a significant effect of age on all sub-tests scores where older children obtained higher scores. Also, there was a significant effect of sex and type of school in some tasks, where girls had higher performance than boys and, the students of PrS scored higher than students of PuS. An interaction between type of school and sex was also evident: PrS girls showed higher performance than other groups in some tasks of attention and memory, especially those that imply verbal information processing. There was a significant correlation between the parents'educational level and the performance in G2. Sons of parents with high educational level show better performance than sons of parents with low educational level. The results are discussed in terms of the environmental variables effect on the development of attention and memory.

Palavras-chave : social environment; attention; cognitive development; memory..

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