Sustained Attention Across Learning Ecologies; Evidence from BaYaka hunter-gatherer children and their non-forager Bantu neighbours

Sustained attention is a core component of cognitive control and is often assumed to depend on formal schooling and classroom-based instruction. However, evidence for this assumption comes almost exclusively from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) populations (Kroupin et al., 2025). Here, we examine the development of sustained attention across contrasting ecologies of learning by comparing forager BaYaka children and neighboring non-forager Bantu children in the northern Republic of the Congo. Using the Continuous Performance Test, a standardized process-level measure of sustained and executive attention (Conners et al., 2003; Huang-Pollock et al., 2012), we assessed vigilance, inhibitory control, response speed and response time variability. Despite distinct modes of learning and markedly different exposure to formal schooling, BaYaka children displayed levels of attentional stability comparable to those of school-attending Bantu children. Departures from Western normative benchmarks were primarily driven by slower response speed rather than increased response time variability, indicating differences in response strategy rather than attentional dysregulation in both groups. Developmental analyses further revealed differences in trajectories of inhibitory control, while perceptual sensitivity improved with age similarly acrossgroups. School attendance did not reliably predict attentional performance, including within the BaYaka sample. Together, these findings show that sustained attention can develop robustly outside formal schooling and support a view of attentional regulation as a flexible, context-sensitive skill shaped by everyday developmental experiences rather than a unitary capacity calibrated to schooling.