Social Presence Effects Across Cultures through the lens of Executive Function

Executive function (EF) develops within social and cultural contexts, yet the impact of others’ presence on children’s EF remains largely unexplored, particularly across cultures. The SPACE project challenges the widespread assumption that children’s EF performance reflects intrinsic capacity independent of immediate social context. Specifically, it examines how experimenter presence influences core EF components (inhibition, working memory, shifting), and whether such effects stem from physical distraction, social aspects, or their interaction. Using a novel paradigm that orthogonally manipulates EF demands while measuring both accuracy and reaction times, complemented by eye-tracking indices of attentional allocation, SPACE will compare children from the UK and Japan. Drawing on evidence that East Asian individuals attend more broadly to contextual information than Western individuals, the project tests whether social presence differentially captures attentional resources across cultural settings. By integrating cognitive, social, and cross-cultural approaches, SPACE advances theoretical models of EF development and clarifies how immediate social environments shape goal-directed behaviour.