Recently, researchers in various fields such as anthropology, archaeology, history, neuroscience, and psychology have been collaborating on research projects to understand how civilizations were built. The purpose of this project is to reconstruct the past by integrating the findings in archaeology and those on human cognition and behavior. In this study, we are developing a cognitive map that indicates regional differences in human perception. Topic modeling for the abstracts of the Stroop test with the regions of author affiliations revealed that the topic proportions related to the task were high in North-Central America. In contrast, the topic proportions related to clinical research were high in Europe. Moreover, a meta-analysis using regions as a moderator showed that the effect sizes of the Stroop test were larger in Asia than those in Europe and North America. These results indicate regional differences in human executive functions. The relevance of human cognition to the distribution of tools, myths, and folk tales that have been created by people to date will be discussed.
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