What is it about?

To implement plans and solve problems we have to control our thoughts and actions, which involve a set of cognitive abilities called executive functions. Because we have to use these abilities in all realms of life, like focusing, deciding what, how and when to do (or not to do) things and being flexible according to the context, executive functions have been extensively studied and found to relate to academic and professional success and wellbeing. The results of these studies have also shown that that there is a general executive capacity that underlies all these abilities (a unity of executive functions), plus some other executive capacities that are recruited to reach certain goals (diversity in executive functions). Yet, it is still unclear if this applies to people from diverse backgrounds because prior studies mostly tested individuals from developed economies, where income and access to health services and schooling is much higher than in most of the world. Hence, our study explored this issue in more than one thousand 18-88-year-old men and women with vastly different educational attainment (0-23 years of schooling) who are from a rural town in a developing, industrialized country (Brazil). Our goal was to determine if we could also observe a general and specific types of executive functions and the extent to which these abilities were affected by age, sex and education. To this end, we adapted previously used executive function tasks so that they could be successfully carried out by most of the people we tested, regardless of their age and schooling levels. We found a general and specific executive capacities, following the same pattern observed in samples from developed economies. However, we also showed that specific executive functions were also affected by variations regarding age, the degree of sex-related occupational discrimination and educational opportunities, which differ from those in develop economies.

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Why is it important?

Most of what is known about human cognition was determined in studies carried out in populations from the Global North, despite the fact that the majority of humankind lives in developing countries, under more adverse conditions that can negatively affect cognitive capacities by influencing brain development due to poor health and/or low education. Hence, to obtain a better understanding about the extent to which cognitive capacities are universal and/or reflect the socio-cultural environment from which people come from it is imperative to assess performance of people from different countries and/or contexts. Our study determined the performance of adults from a developing economy, who varied widely regarding schooling, to try to confirm a theory about a specific set of cognitive abilities (executive functions) that was based on performance of people from the Global North. Using tasks that were adapted for our diverse sample allowed us to confirm this theory. Nonetheless, we also showed that socio-cultural factors play a role in performance. This type of approach is essential to build evidence concerning what aspects of cognition are generalizable across people from different sociocultural backgrounds and which are not and, additionally, to develop context-appropriate interventions to improve these abilities.

Perspectives

This study was challenging mainly because of the lack of guidelines in the literature about how to adequately select and/or adapt tasks that involve complex cognitive capacities, like executive functions, so that they can be carried out by people across adulthood with no/little formal schooling or who reached up to a graduate degree. Here, using open-access, paper-end-pencil, culturally adapted tasks enabled us to successfully show a pattern of results that was similar to that found in people from the Global North, who are much more homogenous in terms of having high access to schooling and who were generally tested with automated tasks. To help other researches from the Global South who may face similar difficulties, we detailed how we selected and adapted the tasks that were used so that they would conform with the theoretical framework that we based our study on and, at the same time, be socio-culturally adequate and affordable. This avoids spendings with software/hardware and potentially biasing results by testing people from disadvantaged backgrounds, many of whom are unfamiliar with computers, and who may find usual cognitive tasks too complicated due to low schooling.

SABINE POMPÉIA
Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo

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This page is a summary of: The unity and diversity of executive functions across adulthood in a diverse Brazilian sample with varying educational attainment., Neuropsychology, April 2026, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/neu0001085.
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