| Evelyn Diez-Martinez: | |
| Name: | Evelyn Diez-Martinez |
| Academic Institution: | Universidad Autonoma De Queretaro |
| email: | evelyn@uaq.mx |
| Country: | Mexico |
| Paper Title | Children’S and Adolescents’ Perceptions, Explanations and Judgments About Everyday Street Information Related to Economic Litteracy |
| Abstract: | The study of the impact of everyday floating information on children’s knowledge about diverse aspects of their social world has hardly been studied concerning their understanding about socio-economic knowledge. Though several studies have analyzed children’s and adolescents behaviour related to the impact of socialization agents on their consumption habits, little is known about how and when they start analyzing several sorts of everyday communication situations concerning economic interchanges. Communication is a much more far-reaching term than language, even if one of the functions, if not the main function of language, is societal communication. Communication may have among others two main functions, to give information and the creation of social bonds. In Mexican society street written messages related to economic information are still very important due to the fact that the access to other forms of distribution of information are restricted for some social groups. This study deals with forms of communication in society as an object of children’s thinking, or more precisely, the prerequisite psychological competences children must have in order to “think” society. Groups of Mexican children and adolescents from different socioeconomic backgrounds were interviewed about diverse street information advertisings or written messages referring to economic interchanges in order of understanding an aspect of their cognitive social development. Individual interviews were carried out with subjects showing a number of cards including photographs of street advertisings and information about economic aspects. Subjects were asked to describe the photograph and to explain its content and the type of information or communication situation that it involved. Some examples were a sign of money on the window of a car, a string with little flags on the edge of a house, and written signs such as; “we are on sale”, “we are having promotions”, “for rent” “credit cards accepted” etc. Subjects were asked to give arguments concerning their answers. Results show cognitive developmental trends as well as socioeconomic differences related to the background and social context. Discussion is made taking on account theories of children and adolescents socioeconomic development as well as social and cultural aspects involved in economic literacy. |