The study had as objective to raise information about the rural children cognition. This sample was composed by 144 rural children, aged from 6 to11 years old, who live in a very poor village localized in the north of Minas Gerais State. The Coloured Matrices Progressives test was applied as well as three subtests from Wechsler Intelligence Scale for ChildrenIII [Arithmetic, Digit Span and Code]. The results showed that, in general, the differences in performance on these tests were associated to age only in younger groups. The comparison between the rural children sample (n=59) to the urban children one (n=143), aged from 7 to 8 years old and all of them academic level equivalent, pointed 30 points of intellectual quotient difference on Raven, and 16.18 points of intellectual quotient difference on two verbal subtests [Arithmetic and Digit Span]. It was concluded that environmental deficits affect more the fluid intelligence than the crystallized intelligence.
preschool students; crystallized intelligence; rural zone; Brazil
