Testing for the Effects of Schooling on Memory in an Ecocultural Setting

The present study examines the recall performance of school and non-school-going children in a natural setting using, as the task, a card game called 'call' quite popular in rural Orissa. Eighteen school and 18 non-school-going children of grade six from a rural area participated in this card game which allowed the experimenter to obtain estimates of immediate and delayed recall performance for each subject. There was practically no difference between the school and non-school-going children in respect of their overall memory competence including immediate and delayed recall. The findings suggest that when non-school children are provided with a task situation that spontaneously activates their memory potential, they perform as well as their school-going peers.