FEASIBILITY AND EFFICACY OF AN INTERVENTION PROMOTING COGNITIVE SKILLS OF SOCIOECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED ROMANI CHILDREN

Children from a socioeconomically disadvantaged background often show a lack in cognitive skills, such as executive functions, early language, and numeracy skills.When socioeconomical differences intersect with ethnicity these barriers are often amplified.Interventions in an informal educational context have been proven to be an effective way of reducing disadvantages.Our study investigates the feasibility and efficacy of a mentoring program.The intervention was designed for preschool aged children from Romani families who live in a socioeconomically deprived environment in a segregated community.We collected data from 48 participants (52% male, aged 6-7), from which 26 participated in the mentoring program.Children in the intervention group participated in weekly sessions in their home environment.The sessions were led by volunteer mentors under the supervision of a psychologist.The sessions aimed to promote skills related to cognitive and socioemotional development.Children were assessed using the Cognitive Profile Test (Gyarmathy, 2009) upon transition to school in a single-point measure.Data obtained from the intervention group was compared to the control group using an independent samples T-test.Our preliminary analysis showed a significant difference on subtests measuring working memory, such as word repetition (p =.002, t=-3.29,df=45), number repetition (p < .001,t=-4.61,df=44) and nonword repetition (p =.012, t=-2.6,df=46) test.Further details on implementation and feasibility will be presented orally.The mentoring program shows a promising way in reducing disadvantages of children living in low SES and ethnic minority households.