11.4 Cognitive Development and Culture

How culture shapes cognition according to Piaget’s constructivist approach and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory is covered in the Hidden Voices chapter about learning and behavior. In summary, children’s experiences within their culture and the cultural tools they grow up with (such as an abacus, a manual counting tool that is used in China) inform how they learn about conservation, categorization, and numbers. This section will focus on some cultural differences in information processing skills, namely executive functioning skills that include controlling and coordinating one’s attention and memory to engage in everyday problem solving or goal-directed activities.

When researchers test children’s executive functioning skills, they engage children in tasks that measure their inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory. One of the main factors impacting children’s executive functioning is emotional regulation (Koay & Van Meter, 2023), and cultures vary on the extent to which they socialize their children about or relay messages about emotional regulation (Chen et al., 1998). For example, compared to Canadian mothers, Chinese mothers value their toddlers’ emotional inhibition (e.g., using moderate noise levels when playing) and display warmth toward and approval of their children when they exhibit inhibition (Chen et al., 1998). Additionally, compared to American mothers, Chinese mothers are more likely to associate their mothering abilities with their children’s academic achievements and thus place a higher value on their children’s academic success (Ng et al., 2014). Indeed, these findings may explain why Chinese preschoolers perform better than American preschoolers on executive functioning tasks measuring inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility (Sabbagh et al., 2006).

Executive functioning skills have also been associated with helping to reduce the impact of poverty on children’s achievement (Ding et al., 2023). Thus, children living in poverty who have good inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory can catch up to their higher-income counterparts. However, this effect diminishes with age, suggesting that executive functioning training may be most beneficial in closing the achievement gap between low- and high-income children if it is provided early in childhood (Ding et al., 2023).