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. 2024 Apr 30;14(1):9921.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-60534-4.

Multiple group membership and executive function in a socioeconomically diverse sample

Nobuhiko Goto  1 , Sony Kusumasondjaja  2 , Fandy Tjiptono  3 , Shirley X L Lim  4   5 , Dexter Shee  6 , Aya Hatano  7 , Nuri Herachwati  2 , Alexandre Schaefer  8
Affiliations

Multiple group membership and executive function in a socioeconomically diverse sample

Nobuhiko Goto et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Belonging to multiple groups is an important feature of our social lives. However, it is largely unknown if it is related to individual differences in cognitive performance. Given that changing self-identities linked to each group requires cognitive operations on knowledge bases associated with each group, the extent to which people belong to multiple groups may be related to individual differences in cognitive performance. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to test if multiple group membership is related to executive function task performance. A socioeconomically diverse sample of 395 individuals in Indonesia participated in this study. Our results show that multiple group membership was positively related to the 3-back working memory performance. However, we also found that this relationship was significant only among participants with high (not median or low) SES. We also observed that Contact diversity was negatively related to working memory performance among participants with low SES. Our results show that the complexity of our social lives is related to individual differences in executive function performance, although this seems to be constrained by SES.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Scatterplots of key variables.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Multiple group membership and 3 back d’ scores as a function of SES.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Contact diversity and 3 back d’ scores as a function of SES.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The procedure of the N-back tasks.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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