Executive functions of preschoolers with different levels of cultural congruence

Abstract

© 2020, © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This study investigated the relationships between executive functions of children aged 5–6 and the level of their cultural congruence, that reflects the extent to which behaviour of a child corresponds to a set of cultural rules, typical for this age in this culture. The main components of executive functions (working memory, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control) were measured by the Russian versions of the NEPSY-II subtests and the DCCS test. For the cultural congruence assessment, the parent ‘Questionnaire for Studying Children’s Compliance with Rules in a Normative Situation’ was applied. There were 113 preschoolers from Kazan, Tatarstan Republic, Russia (57 boys and 56 girls, 66 months on the average) and 113 mothers (from 24 to 44-years-old, 36 years on the average) in the study. Three levels of cultural congruence were singled out–‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’. The results showed that children with a ‘high’ level of cultural congruence develop inhibitory control to a greater extent, while children with a ‘low’ level of compliance develop cognitive flexibility. A lowest level of executive functions was found in the group with the ‘medium’ level of cultural congruence.