Abstract

MARILICAN-CONTRERAS, María Fernanda; ALONQUEO BOUDON, Paula  and  OLIVA-VASQUEZ, Eloy. Working memory and spatial representation in mapuche and non-mapuche schoolchildren from La Araucanía. Cienc. Psicol. [online]. 2023, vol.17, n.1, e2873.  Epub June 01, 2023. ISSN 1688-4094.  https://doi.org/10.22235/cp.v17i1.2873.

The objective of this study was to determine if there are differences in performance in working memory and spatial representation in rural Mapuche children and non-Mapuche urban children, from the Araucanía region, Chile. 96 students between 8 and 12 years old participated (M = 10.33; SD = 1.02) who answered tasks of working memory and spatial representation in verbal and non-verbal format. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was performed, controlling for the effect of age and gender. The results show that Mapuche participants scored lower than their non-Mapuche peers in verbal working memory and marginally significant differences were found in non-verbal working memory. In the verbal spatial representation, no differences will be obtained in the groups and in the non-verbal spatial representation Mapuche children obtained a significantly higher performance than their non-Mapuche peers. Non-Mapuche children perform better on verbal tasks, while Mapuche children perform similarly or higher on non-verbal tasks. The relevance of ecological validity from the situated cognition paradigm is discussed.

Keywords : working memory; spatial representation; mapuche; non mapuche; rural; urban.

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