Australian Aboriginal Cognition in Context

Abstract

Psychological and educational interest in Australian Aborigines since the turn of this century has produced a considerable body of cognitive research evidence. Most of this has been characterised by inappropriate research methodology based on theoretical assumptions derived from a context-specific and therefore centricultural western psychology. The impact of such evidence has contributed extensively to ideologically convenient notions of culturally-based differences in cognitive capacities, and produced impoverished rationales which have directed the transference of deficit interpretations placed upon standardised psychological test results with Aborigines into applied educational contexts, usually through the instigation of unsuccessful ‘client-change’ programmes. Recent cognitive research concerned with examining operational skills exercised in the context of Aboriginal culture has emphasised the cognitive proficiency of Aboriginal people, and has begun to outline a complex array of culture-relevant cognitive and learning strategies. Such research has ethnographically recognised Aboriginal cognitive competence, due in some measure to the reconceptualisation of cognition in terms of context-sensitive processes or operations, instead of inherent properties or capacities. It has sought to identify and examine those situations in which that competence may be evident, and further to comprehend and analyse the processes underlying the skills by which that competence is expressed.