Cognitive processes in everyday life situations: An ethnographic study of Brazilian urban migrants

The main objective of this study was to obtain descriptive data on problem solving and reasoning processes in everyday life situations, and on the relationships of these processes to performance on intelligence tests and in the formal school situation. The aim was to generate rather than to test hypotheses. The study was developed in a squatter settlement in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, where the researcher worked as a teacher of an adult course during eighteen months. The investigator observed community members' behavior in various situations of their ordinary lives. She also administered interviews and two general intelligence tests (Raven Progressive Matrices and Cattell Culture Fair Intelligence Test) to 73 subjects. An ethnographic description of the cognitive functioning of the subjects in their everyday life environment was developed. A detailed analysis of the subjects' cognitive performance on the tests was also performed. Some clear relationships were observed among tests scores, demographic variables and everyday life performance of subjects. The subjects, a relatively homogeneous group of low SES migrants from rural underdeveloped areas of the country, performed consistently below the median of the groups for whom test norms were available. However, the scores on the two tests showed substantial distribution of individual differences and were highly correlated. They were also related to other subjects' characteristics. Most importantly, they were related to the display of relevant competencies in everyday life situations as observed in the ethnographic study. Also, the subjects who had gone to school for a longer period, who were in higher grades when administered the tests, who obtained better grades in present school courses and who tended to remain in school and pass to the next grade, tended to obtain higher scores on the tests. Those subjects who worked in more skilled occupations and those who earned higher salaries also tended to obtain higher test scores. These relationships showed the interplay between two complementary aspects of performance on cognitive tasks: the different average performance of different social groups, and the individual differences found within otherwise homogeneous social groups. Possibilities for further research were discussed.