Executive function may stem from schooling rather than innate cognition

[erronis]

https://phys.org/news/2025-07-function-stem-schooling-innate-cognition.html
Clea Simon, Harvard University

Executive function—top-down processes by which the human mind controls behavior, regulating thoughts and actions—have long been studied using a standard set of tools, with these assessments being included in national and international child development norms.

A new study of children in schooled and unschooled environments, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, raises questions about some of the assumptions underlying the way psychologists and scholars of cognitive science think about these processes.

Instead of defining an innate, basic feature of human cognition, the executive functions supposedly captured in the assessments are likelier to depend on the influence of formal schooling.

The study, "The cultural construction of 'executive function,'" tested children in the Kunene region of Africa, which spans the countries of Namibia and Angola, as well as children in the U.K. and Bolivia. Children in rural areas of Kunene who received limited or no formal schooling differed profoundly in so-called executive function testing from their schooled peers, or a "typical" Western schooled sample.

. . .

More information: Ivan Kroupin et al, The cultural construction of "executive function," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2407955122

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Interesting, but not unexpected. Thanks.

[pnwmom]

2. It would be unexpected to millions of homeschooler parents. nt

[littlemissmartypants]

3. If the parents were

Actually doing the schooling, maybe.

Usually there are canned curriculum packages bought online and the kids sit in front of a computer for a majority of their "instructional time" alone.

Maybe they interact with online teachers. Maybe they go outside on "field trips" or join a sports team at a regular school for socialization. Maybe.

My impression is that the brain is so malleable that it stands to reason that intense experiential learning is critical for the development of executive functions.

One can't learn what one isn't exposed to on some level, no matter how basic.

It's like MLL in AI programming. Algorithms are only going to produce outcomes commensurate with the quality of the input.

It reminds me of the phrase, "garbage in, garbage out."

But that's just my perspective.

❤️

[Jim__]

4. Essentially, executive function develops along the lines of its training.

...

"In the populations we work in, people are super good at remembering cows," he said. "They can look at the herd, they can tell you how many cows there are, they can name the cows. If you showed them the faces of cows, they can tell you who the owner is. And I bet if I did this with kids around here in Boston, they would be terrible at differentiating cows."
...

Ivan Kroupin, the paper's lead author and a former postdoc in Henrich's lab, elaborated, "The term 'executive function' refers to a set of capacities and dispositions that are, in large part, culture-specific."

Kroupin, who is currently at the London School of Economics and co-directed the field studies with Helen Elizabeth Davis of Arizona State University, said, "Our study suggests that the capacities these tasks require are in part universal, but also in part culture-specific, potentially tied to formal schooling or other institutions and experiences in urbanized societies."

...