Exploring the link between a theory of mind and executive functions in preschool children

Abstract

Acquisition of the theory of mind (TOM) is a very important milestone in the development of preschool children. TOM is especially important for the development of children’s social skills. The goal of the present study was to examine the effects of age, gender and executive functions (EF) on the acquisition of TOM. The sample in this study consisted of 116 preschool children aged 36-72 months (mean age 58.8 months, SD= 9.5 months). In relation to the child’s gender, there were 56 girls (48.3%) and 60 boys (51.7%). The Sally Anne test- a task purporting to measure TOM, was used as a dependant variable and age, gender, and EF measures were used as the predictors. Logistic regression was used as a method to determine the effects of predictors on TOM. The results of this study indicated that success on the TOM test can best be predicted by the inhibitory control, followed by verbal fluency and child’s age. The gender of the child was not associated with TOM acquisition. The overall model explained between 27% and 38% of the variance in the TOM scores. Inhibitory control is the executive function that had the greatest predictive power for the results on the theory of the mind task. The findings of this study can help early interventionists in the modification of existing preschool curricula, so that they include more activities that would foster the development of the theory of mind in preschool children. Future studies should aim to find a better model of theory of mind predictors by examining the effects of other executive function constructs, such as working memory.