Final answer:
American children would likely perform better with household objects due to cultural familiarity, and African children might perform better with rocks, assuming the objects align with their cultural experiences.
Step-by-step explanation:
Regarding the performance of American and African children in memorizing locations of objects on a chessboard - with one condition using rocks and the other using household objects common in the West - we could predict that American children will perform better with household objects, while African children will perform better with rocks. This prediction is based on the concepts of cultural familiarity and context-specific learning. Objects that are common in the daily lives of the children are more likely to be familiar to them, thereby making it easier for those children to remember and organize the information. For instance, American children are more likely to be familiar with household objects common in the West, and African children might be more familiar with rocks which could be a more prevalent part of their natural surroundings or cultural experiences. Moreover, the analogy of 'a square peg fitting through the square hole and a round peg fitting through the round hole' of a children's toy suggests that children (and people in general) tend to learn and perform better with materials that 'fit' their already existing knowledge and experiences.