Abstract

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.