Executive function may stem from schooling rather than innate cognition

[Jim__]

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

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"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."
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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."

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