title: Schooling, Local Knowledge and Working Memory: A Study among Three Contemporary Hunter-Gatherer Societies.
abstract: Researchers have analysed whether school and local knowledge complement or substitute each other, but have paid less attention to whether those two learning models use different cognitive strategies. In this study, we use data collected among three contemporary hunter-gatherer societies with relatively low levels of exposure to schooling yet with high levels of local ecological knowledge to test the association between i) schooling and ii) local ecological knowledge and verbal working memory. Participants include 94 people (24 Baka, 25 Punan, and 45 Tsimane') from whom we collected information on 1) schooling and school related skills (i.e., literacy and numeracy), 2) local knowledge and skills related to hunting and medicinal plants, and 3) working memory. To assess working memory, we applied a multi-trial free recall using words relevant to each cultural setting. People with and without schooling have similar levels of accurate and inaccurate recall, although they differ in their strategies to organize recall: people with schooling have higher results for serial clustering, suggesting better learning with repetition, whereas people without schooling have higher results for semantic clustering, suggesting they organize recall around semantically meaningful categories. Individual levels of local ecological knowledge are not related to accurate recall or organization recall, arguably due to overall high levels of local ecological knowledge. While schooling seems to favour some organization strategies this might come at the expense of some other organization strategies.
authors.affiliation: Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain.|Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Victoria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Reyes-García
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.|Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Aili
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pyhälä
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Díaz-Reviriego
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Romain
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Duda
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.|Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: Álvaro
authors.initials: Á
authors.lastname: Fernández-Llamazares
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.|Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Site du Musée de l'Homme, Paris, France.
authors.forename: Sandrine
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gallois
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Maximilien
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guèze
authors.affiliation: Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Lucentezza
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Napitupulu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D019359:Knowledge; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D012660:Semantics; D055815:Young Adult