Schooling and Abstraction Capacity:
A Study with the Brazilian Test of Proverbs
Keywords:
Abstraction capacity, Schooling, Proverbs interpretationAbstract
This paper aims to evaluate the influence of the schooling on abstraction capacity. Such capacity was evaluated
through the Brazilian Test of Proverbs, that allows evaluation of thought concretude or abstraction as a funetion of the subjects'
responses. Subjects were 61 male and female adults, aged 18 to 67 years old, divided in two groups: Group "A, low levei of
schooling, was attending night school 3a1 or 4th grades; and Group B, high levei of schooling, was attending 5th to 8th grades.
The degree of dependence and the strength of association among the variables schooling, sex, age and the levei of abstraction,
were evaluated by the chi-square test and the Tschuprow Coefficient (7). The results demonstrated that: (1) there were no
differences between sex and age; (2) Group B subjects showed higher levei of abstraction, although the number of significant
correlations among the variables was not high. The few significant correlations between abstraction capacity and schooling
may be due to the little contrast between the two groups and to the fact that the proverbs were often used by subjects in their
speech.
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