Function of a Child\'s Environment

¶ … Function of a Child's Environment on his/her Performance on an Assessment

The function of a child's environment on assessment performance:

Social and economic factors

The function of a child's environment on assessment performance:

Social and economic factors

Testing a child is not like testing a car or a toy: children can be highly influenced by the environment in which the assessment takes place. A child who has never taken a standardized or psychological test will not have the same type of facility and comfort with the assessment process as a child who is accustomed to sitting in a classroom, filling out bubbles on a standardized test, or answering questions about puzzles and words before the gaze of an authority figure.

The attitude of the test administrator is one of the most critical but overlooked aspects of the testing environment. The administrator must strive to put the child at ease. Explaining what is transpiring in an age-appropriate fashion, talking with the child about things the child likes to do, and creating a non-threatening environment is essential. Cultural expectations, such as the child's perception of the test administrator as a friendly individual, because of his or her experiences with authority figures, or biases on the part of the administrator because of the child's demographic group, economic background, or past test results can have an unconscious impact on the assessment.

"Test administration must take into account cultural conditioning that may find the student terrorized in the face of a typographical error, a timed test, or the language-specific bias" of a test (Cargill-Power 1980). Because of test anxiety, an ESL student with a basic academic proficiency in English may temporarily lose some of his or her mastery of the language. Talking with the child socially before lapsing into the academic testing portion of the exam can help mitigate this problem.

The environment of the child before the test that creates the child's social worldview must also be kept in mind. Even in tests subjecting rats to a series of mazes, the rat's different laboratory environments affected performance outcomes in a series of timed trials (Lewejohann et al. 2006). Interestingly as well, the rat's housing conditions before the test affected results. A child from a poor and stressed environment of the same relative cognitive ability as another child from a more stable environment may have greater difficulty performing at an optimal level. Simple factors, such as whether a child has had breakfast that morning can also affect test results. According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, an individual cannot access higher-level needs, including the need to optimally perform to please the examiner or a teacher, until basic needs such as hunger, shelter, and safety demands are satisfied. If the child's needs are not met at home or at school -- for example, if he or she is a traumatized recent immigrant from Haiti or lives in a food insecure household in the inner city -- the child may not be able exhibit the maximum extent of his or her ability.