Further consideration of the role of socio-economic status in memory performance

✍ Scribed by Mary Ann Guadagno; Douglas Herrmann

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 112 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0888-4080
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0720(1998120)12:6<611::aid-acp580>3.0.co;2-p

✦ Synopsis

In his commentary, Richardson criticizes the analysis of the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and memory performance as presented by Herrmann and Guadagno (1997). Richardson's criticism addresses Herrmann and Guadagno's procedures for classifying economic backgrounds of subjects and the statistics they used to analyze the eects of SES and memory. We believe that all of these points are worth considering but suggest that it is too early in this research area to de®nitively settle on either (a) the best procedure for classifying SES or (b) the most eective statistical method for post-hoc analysis of memory data. The underlying issues are too complex and the number of investigations too few to argue that one procedure or method is right and the other wrong. Alternatively, Richardson's commentary agrees with ours in two important ways. Richardson's article and ours both assert that economic background is clearly a relevant variable in explaining memory performance. In addition, both articles recommend that memory and cognitive researchers take account of economic well being in future memory research.