The developing of executive function skills through culturally organized autonomy and helping

Abstract

The study of Executive Function skills, like most research in the developmental sciences, has been heavily focused on the experiences of children from Western, industrialized, highly schooled and middle-class communities, often ignoring the experiences of the majority of children in the world. When research does include diverse populations, the approach is often from a deficit perspective, looking for ways to “fix” these children's lack of Executive Function skills. In this commentary, I argue for a contextual definition of Executive Function skills to reflect children's lived experiences, including the daily experiences of Indigenous children. I provide examples to illustrate how cultural values such as respect for children's autonomy and being acomedida/o can support the development of Executive Function skills. I then propose how the field of executive function research can move forward by (1) recognizing the broader ways in which children's daily activities can contribute to their Executive Function skills and (2) creating culturally relevant methods to measure Executive Function skills.