Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Executive functions are known to be shaped by formal education, yet direct evidence from adult populations with minimal schooling remains scarce. The present study examines the effects of education and reading experience on inhibitory control by comparing literate and illiterate adults using a simple inhibition task. Participants also completed measures of reading fluency with real and nonce words. Results revealed significantly higher inhibitory accuracy in literate participants compared to illiterate participants. Importantly, inhibitory performance showed limited variability among literate adults, suggesting a ceiling effect, whereas illiterate adults displayed substantially large individual differences. These findings support the view that formal education and sustained engagement with written language contribute to the development of inhibitory control mechanisms. The study provides novel behavioral evidence that literacy-related experiences continue to shape executive functions in adulthood from a Turkish population, highlighting the cognitive consequences of unequal access to formal education.