Early geographic mobility and cognitive development

This study explored the relationship between geographic mobility and cognitive development. The mobility experience disrupts the usual transactions between an agent and its environment. Compensatory behaviors develop allowing an individual to adapt to the environmental transition and continue the dialectics of development. Repeated childhood geographic mobility may promote, in adults, a simultaneous, field-independent cognitive development.;The study employed the dialectical development, information processing and environmental cognition literatures. Data were collected, from 305 former childhood movers, using the Simultaneous and Successive Test Battery (Das, Kirby, & Jarman 1979), and Witkin Embedded Figures Test (1950), and Geographic Mobility questionnaire. Tests of hypotheses were conducted with multiple regression analyses. The results indicated that geographic mobility has no major effect on adult information processes and cognitive styles, but does account for some differences in specific cognitive functions. Geographic mobility may have a greater effect on other cognitive mechanisms or in personality development.