Family environments and daily activities shape children’s executive function: Cross-ethnic evidence from a multicultural Asian society.

Executive function (EF), encompassing cognitive "cool" and affective "hot" components, develops in the context of children's everyday experiences during early childhood.However, how family contexts shape EF through children's daily activities remains less well-understood, particularly in Asian societies.Drawing on nationally representative longitudinal data from the Singapore Longitudinal Early Development Study, we examined how parental resources, parenting behaviors, and children's time use contribute to hot and cool EF, indexed by working memory and delay of gratification, respectively.The sample included 2,542 children aged 36-83 months (M = 58.7,SD = 14.2) at baseline across ethnic Chinese, Malay, and Indian families.Structural equation modeling revealed that parental resources predicted children's EF both directly and indirectly through parenting behaviors and children's activities.Greater parental resources, including better verbal cognitive ability, stronger self-control, and lower economic stress, were associated with more positive parenting (consistent rule-setting, warmth/responsiveness, and less punishment), as well as more enriching time-use patterns in children.Among parenting behaviors, rule-setting was the strongest predictor of children's time use, particularly lower screen time and greater time spent in achievement-oriented activities, both of which, in turn, predicted hot and cool EF.Physically active play also predicted stronger EF, independent of parental resources and parenting behaviors.Multigroup analyses revealed largely consistent pathways across ethnic groups, although some associations differed in magnitude or emerged only within specific groups.These findings highlight both universal and culturally contingent pathways to EF development and underscore the importance of situating EF within sociocultural contexts to inform culturally responsive interventions. Public Significance StatementThis study shows that children's executive function develops through a combination of family resources, parenting practices, and everyday experiences.Parenting behaviors such as warmth, responsiveness, and rule-setting, along with children's daily activities, such as less screen time, more learning-related activities, and more physically active play, support the development of executive function.Although these patterns were broadly similar across ethnic Chinese, Malay, and Indian families in Singapore, their strength varied across ethnic groups, highlighting the importance of sociocultural context in designing interventions to promote children's executive function development in real-world settings.