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...