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Title: Children's Cognitive Skill Development in Britain and the United States
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Michael, Robert T.
Children's Cognitive Skill Development in Britain and the United States
Working Paper No. 01.19, The Harris School of Public Policy Studies, The University of Chicago, 2001
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago
Keyword(s): Britain, British; Cognitive Development; Cross-national Analysis; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Test Scores/Test theory/IRT; Verbal Memory (McCarthy Scale)

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

The paper compares the cognitive test scores of children in Great Britain and the United States in vocabulary, reading, mathematics and memory of words and numbers. Children age 5-9 in Britain systematically out-perform their U.S. counterparts on reading, mathematics tests, while children age 10-14 show far fewer differences. In many of the comparisons, there are no statistical differences in the distributions of test scores between the British and United States children. The explanation for the observed differences between the younger children in the two nations in reading and mathematics may be the earlier age of entry into formal schooling in Britain. The similarity of the observed skills of the older children in the two nations, given the differences in social and economic conditions experienced by those children, challenges the notion that these differences are critically important in the children's cognitive development.
Bibliography Citation
Michael, Robert T. "Children's Cognitive Skill Development in Britain and the United States." Working Paper No. 01.19, The Harris School of Public Policy Studies, The University of Chicago, 2001.