What is the link between economic growth – modernization – and cognitive growth?

A study published in December 2009 in Child Development by Mary Gauvain and Robert Munroe looks at the contribution of modernization in 4 more traditional cultures to overall cognitive development.

What is modernization?

Modernization includes:

• Increased engagement in commerce
• Availability of technology that affect how people satisfy basic needs, regulate health and well-being, and communicate with and learn about the world outside the community.
• More production and more efficient distribution of resources.

The Flynn Effect

The contributions of modernization to cognitive development have attracted attention in  relation to what is known as the the ‘Flynn effect’ – the striking global rise in national average IQ level of around 3 points per decade.

The data reported in this article support Flynn’s orginal hypothesis that resources  and stimuli associated with modernization – and what Schooler later called environmental complexity – are a key factor driving the Flynn effect, making us smarter with each passing decade as the information processing demands of society increase.

Previous studies have shown that the following aspects of modernization have contributed to academic achievement and motivation, as well as more openness to new experiences:

• commercialization,
• industrialization,
• urbanization,
• entrepreneurship,
• wage-labor opportunities,
• formal schooling

Recent study on the economic growth–cognitive growth link

What makes this recent study unique is that it looks at differences in cognitive development between 4 communities with different mixes of traditional and modern: Garifuna (Belize), Logoli (Kenya), Newars (Nepal), and Samoans (American Samoa).  Samoa and Garifuna were relative to the other two communities, more modernized – with, or example, less subsistence living and the availability of both primary and secondary schools. In this way they were able to be able to better identify the cultural factors that produced the cognitive differences.

The performance of 3-, 5-, 7- & 9-year old children on 7 cognitive measures were recorded. These included tests for memory, IQ, willingness to explore, motor coordination, interpersonal perspective taking, and gender understanding. Modernization level in the study was measured by the number of household items that are marks of modernization, including writing books, the availability of electricity, a home-based water supply, radio and television sets, and ownership of a motor vehicle.

The study found that all of the measures of cognition (not including motor coordination) – including social perspective taking –  improved with increasing modernity. The more modernized the household, the more cognitively developed the child was found to be. In memory recall there was a 30% better score in the most modernized compared to the least modernized of the 4 communities. For the measure of IQ (block building) this difference was close to 50%.

Take home

These are striking cognitive differences between communities. They strongly support the idea that it is modernization and the more information-rich and complex world that it creates that underlies the Flynn effect and the steady increase IQ seen all around the world.

Reference

Free PDF of this article can be found here.