This research examined the relation between individual differences in inhibitory control (IC; a central component of executive functioning) and theory-of-mind (ToM) performance in preschool-age children. Across two sessions, 3- and 4-year-old children (N = 107) were given multitask batteries measuring IC and ToM. Inhibitory control was strongly related to ToM, r = .66, p < .001. This relation remained significant controlling for age, gender, verbal ability, motor sequencing, family size, and performance on pretend-action and mental state control tasks. Inhibitory tasks requiring a novel response in the face of a conflicting prepotent response (Conflict scale) and those requiring the delay of a prepotent response (Delay scale) were significantly related to ToM. The Conflict scale, however, significantly predicted ToM performance over and above the Delay scale and control measures, whereas the Delay scale was not significant in a corresponding analysis. These findings suggest that IC may be a crucial enabling factor for ToM development, possibly affecting both the emergence and expression of mental state knowledge. The implications of the findings for a variety of executive accounts of ToM are discussed.

The relation between executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) may involve specific processes of inhibition and/or working memory capacity contributing to ToM, or it might be a reflection of general intellectual ability. To differentiate these alternatives, we administered task batteries measuring inhibitory control (IC), working memory, and ToM, as well as measures of verbal and performance intelligence, to 47 typically developing preschool children. Inhibitory control tasks in which a dominant response needed to be suppressed while a subdominant response was activated (Conflict IC) significantly predicted performance on false belief tasks over and above working memory, the intelligence measures, a simple delay task (Delay IC), and age. In contrast, working memory, Delay IC, and intelligence were not significant in this analysis. Conflict IC, but not Delay IC, was related to working memory. Together, these findings suggest that the combination of inhibition and working memory (as reflected in Conflict IC tasks) may be central to the relation between EF and false belief understanding. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Key words: executive function; inhibitory control; theory of mind One of the most robust changes in all of cognitive development occurs in the theory of mind domain in the preschool years. At the beginning of this period, at around age 3, children typically flounder when questioned about false beliefs, misleading appearances, and divergent perspectives. Yet, by the time they are 5 or 6, questions of this kind are more often than not answered with consummate ease (Flavell, 1999; Wellman, in press). These findings have lent themselves quite naturally to a conceptual change interpretation: What younger preschoolers lack,

Preschoolers' theory-of-mind development follows a similar age trajectory across many cultures. To determine whether these similarities are related to similar underlying ontogenetic processes, we examined whether the relation between theory of mind and executive function commonly found among U.S. preschoolers is also present among Chinese preschoolers. Preschoolers from Beijing, China (N = 109), were administered theory-of-mind and executive-functioning tasks, and their performance was compared with that of a previously studied sample of U.S. preschoolers (N = 107). The Chinese preschoolers out-performed their U.S. counterparts on all measures of executive functioning, but were not similarly advanced in theory-of-mind reasoning. Nonetheless, individual differences in executive functioning predicted theory of mind for children in both cultures. Thus, the relation between executive functioning and theory of mind is robust across two disparate cultures. These findings shed light on why executive functioning is important for theoryof-mind development.Over the preschool years, children's understanding of their own and other individuals' mental states-that is, their theory of mind-goes though an important transition that is often indexed by their emerging understanding of false belief (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Recent findings show considerable cross-cultural synchrony in the age at which children gain facility with false-belief reasoning (Callaghan et al., 2005). It is not clear, however, whether this cross-cultural developmental synchrony can be attributed to universal developmental processes.Within Western cultures, several factors have been shown to affect the developmental timetable of false-belief and related theory-of-mind concepts. One factor believed to be particularly important is executive functioning (Carlson & Moses, 2001;Moses, 2001;Perner & Lang, 1999). Several studies of Western children have shown that their performance on false-belief and other theory-of-mind tasks can be predicted from tasks that tap executive-functioning skills such as response inhibition, cognitive conflict resolution, and working memory (Carlson, Moses, & Hix, 1998;Davis & Pratt, 1995;Frye, Zelazo, & Palfai, 1995;Hughes, 1998;Perner & Lang, 2000). These relations typically persist even when factors such as age and verbal ability are controlled. To begin to assess whether this Copyright © 2006 NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript developmental pathway might be universal, we examined whether the relation between executive function and theory of mind also holds in children from Beijing, China.This population is of theoretical interest because there are reasons to believe that Chinese preschoolers may show more mature patterns of executive functioning than U.S. preschoolers. First, cultural psychologists have noted that Chinese parents expect children as young as 2 years old to master impulse control, whereas U.S. parents do not expect such mastery until the preschool years (Chen...

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The authors assess the study of cognitive development and what it reveals about children's ability to appreciate and cope with advertising. Whereas prior research on children and advertising has drawn heavily on Piaget's developmental theory, the authors argue that more recent approaches that focus on the development of children's “theories of mind” and “executive functioning” skills may prove more fruitful. The review of research on these topics generates two predictions: First, on the basis of theories-of-mind literature, the authors expect that children have well-formed conceptions of the intentions underlying advertising by seven or eight years of age. Second, on the basis of executive functions literature, the authors expect that children are not able to deploy these concepts effectively in their everyday lives until much later in development.