Cross-cultural Research Of Executive Function Among The Yi、Bai And Naxi Ethnic On 4～6 Years Old

The executive function is that the individual supervise and control all kinds of operation process consciously, including self- regulation, cognitive flexibility,response inhibition, planning, etc. And working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive shift are three core elements. With the development of economy and culture,the development of children’s cross-cultural executive function have had caused many scholars’ attention of both at home and abroad, Yang(2005) select the Chinese children and Australian children as the research object to research developmental characteristics of hot executive function, and put forward the cultural values of the two kinds of children is the most important reason in the development of executive function.Otherwise, China is a multi-ethnic country, that has many unique subculture under the background of the great Chinese culture. at present, fewer research discuss children’s executive function development characteristics under the background of cross-cultural subculture comparison research. Therefore, the paper select 4 ~ 6 years old 272 Yi、Bai and Naxi ethnic children as the participants to study the developmental characteristics of executive function and compare its cross-cultural difference.In practical terms, the paper include two experiments, Study 1,to investigate characteristics and cultural differences about cool executive function(cool EF) of Yi,Bai, Naxi ethnic children.The testing tasks include four tasks: the day/night;Snow/grass; WCST;Sentence breadth.Study 2, to investigate characteristics and cultural differences about hot executive function(hot EF) of Yi, Bai,Naxi ethnic children. The testing tasks select delay of gratification.study 1 adopt four tasks(the day/night;Snow/grass; WCST;Sentence breadth) to investigate characteristics and cultural differences about cool executive function(cool EF) of Yi, Bai, Naxi ethnic children, the age from 4 to 6 years old, the abilities are inhibitory control working memory and cognitive shift. There is 267 participants,including 82 Yi ethnic(from Ningliang county of Yunnan province)、92 Bai ethnic(from Nujiang county of Yunnan province)、83 Naxi ethnic(from Lijiang ancient city of Yunnan province). The results show that the three ethnic’s cool EF have a significant difference. Embodied in:(1) inhibitory control ability from high to low is respectively:Bai ethnic, Naxi ethnic, Yi ethnic; Otherwise, three ethnic also showed significant age differences on inhibitory control ability..4~5 years old group, inhibitory control ability of Bai and Naxi ethnic show significantly better than Yi ethnic. 6 years old group, inhibitory control ability of Bai 、 Naxi Yi ethnic show no difference.(2)Adopting sentence breadth task test three ethnic working memory ability, the result showed that: 4, 5, 6 years old groups embodied in working memory, Bai ethnic is better than Naxi ethnic, is better than Yi ethnic.(3) Adopting WCST task test cognitive shift of three ethnics, the task include “big or small; quantity;colour;shape” four categories, the result is outstanding. Showed that, 4 years old age group, at the same time, the percentage of passing the four categories is Naxi ethnic> Bai ethnic > Yi ethnic;5 years old age group, at the same time, the percentage of passing the four categories is Naxi ethnic > Bai ethnic > Yi ethnic;6 years old age group, at the same time, the percentage of passing the four categories is Bai ethnic > Naxi ethnic> Yi ethnic. In general, 4 ~ 6 years old, cognitive shift ability of Bai and Naxi ethnic is better than Yi ethnic.Study 2 adopt delay of gratification investigate characteristics and cultural differences about hot executive function(hot EF) of Yi, Bai, Naxi ethnic children, the age from 4 to 6 years old, There is 272 participants, including 96 Yi ethnic(from Ningliang county of Yunnan province)、87 Bai ethnic(from Nujiang county of Yunnan province)、89 Naxi ethnic(from Lijiang ancient city of Yunnan province). This study divided into selection and maintenance of two stages, in the selection stages of delayed gratification, aged 4 ~ 6 years more than 95% of the three national children chose "delayed gratification", show the same tendency of choice; In the maintenance stages of delayed gratification, Bai and Naxi ethnic aged 4 ~ 6 years on the pass rate is significantly higher than Yi ethnic; 4, 5, 6 years old age groups is showed that the average waiting time of Bai and Naxi ethnic is higher than Yi ethnic; The overall average waiting time from high to low is: Bai ethnic, Naxi ethnic, Yi ethnic.The studies have shown that Yi, Bai, Naxi ethnic aged from 4 to 6 years have significant difference on the development of executive function.which has two top results:(1) the three ethnics have same development trend on cool executive function(cool EF), the inhibitory control ability and cognitive shift ability of Bai ethnic is betterthan Yi, Naxi ethnic.(2) 4~6 years old Yi, Bai, Naxi ethnic have quite inter-temporal value in the ability of hot executive function, the selection stage of delayed gratification show on differences, and 4~5 years delayed gratification ability(inhibitory control ability) show the ethnic differences. The main reasons for Differences in the three ethnic children’s executive function may be its unique cultural values, at the same time, has formed its life history strategy, the concept of education et al. This study select representative ethnic of Yunnan province(Yi, Bai, Naxi ethnic) as participants, examining the cultural differences affect to the development of children’s executive function, it is not only broadening the research field of children’s executive function, but also provides theory basis of executive function for early intervention training.