Generative AI in intercultural STEAM projects and executive functioning in secondary education

Background. Claims that generative AI (GenAI) erodes higher-order cognition rest largely on correlational surveys and brief laboratory tasks with university students in the Global North. Whether these costs belong to the technology or to the instructional design around it is untested in secondary classrooms, where executive functioning is rarely an outcome in its own right. Aims. We tested whether an eight-week intercultural STEAM unit treating GenAI as an object of verification rather than a source of answers improved planning, cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, and whether prompting quality explained change in inhibition. Method. Quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test design, two intact cohorts, Saraguro canton, Ecuador (N = 138; Mage = 16.34). The experimental cohort (n = 70) built automated irrigation prototypes under a recursive prompting protocol grounded in Kichwa-Saraguro water management; the active control (n = 68) completed the same brief through conventional project-based learning. Executive functioning was measured with the BRIEF-2 and compared by ANCOVA (baseline covariate; Bonferroni α = .0167). Prompt logs were scored on a three-facet rubric and regressed on residualised change. Results. Baselines were equivalent. Adjusted effects favoured the experimental condition for Planning/Organisation (d = 1.33), Shift (d = 0.85) and Inhibit (d = 0.62). Prompt quality predicted residualised change in Inhibit (r = −.74, R² = .54) but not Shift (r = −.22); Verification alone added 20.8% of variance. Conclusions. The association was facet-specific, consistent with targeted training of response inhibition rather than general cognitive benefit. Self-reported outcomes and condition–school confounding limit the findings to plausibility.