When the poor excel: Poverty facilitates procedural learning. Issue 4 (6th May 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dang, Junhua; Xiao, Shanshan; Zhang, Ting; Liu, Ying; Jiang, Bin; Mao, Lihua
• Is Part Of: Scandinavian journal of psychology. Volume 57:Issue 4(2016)
• Page Start: 288
• Page End: 291
• Publication Date: 2016-05-06
• Subjects: Poverty -- cognitive functions -- procedural learning -- information‐integration; Psychology -- Periodicals; 150
• DOI: 10.1111/sjop.12292
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0036-5564

Abstract

Abstract : Recent research has shown that poverty directly impeded cognitive functions because the poor could be easily distracted by monetary concerns. We argue that this effect may be limited to functions relying on working memory. For functions that rely on proceduralized processes however, monetary concerns elicited by reminding of financial demands would be conducive rather than harmful. Our results supported this hypothesis by showing that participants with lower income reached the learning criterion of the information‐integration categorization task faster than their more affluent counterparts after reminding of financial demands.