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Development of Logical Reasoning and the School Performance of African American Adolescents in Relation to Socioeconomic Status, Ethnic Identity, and Self-Esteem

Rowan University, chapell{at}rowan.edu

Willis F. Overton

Temple University

This study explored the deductive reasoning and school performance of 330 African American adolescents and the relation of reasoning and school performance to socioeconomic status (SES), ethnic identity, and self-esteem. As expected, there was a systematic increase in selection task reasoning performance across adolescence, and high SES students outscored low SES students in reasoning performance and school grades. Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory, which predicts an inverse relationship between cognitive performance and ethnic idfentity strength, was not supported because better reasoning performance was associated instead with stronger ethnic identity. Steele’s stereotype-threat theory, which predicts that there will be an association between global self-esteem and school grades in early adolescent African Americans that subsequently decreases across adolescence, was partially supported. Self-esteem and grades were strongly related in 6th graders, not significantly related in 10th and 12th graders, yet strongly related in college students.

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