Relations Between False Belief Understanding and Executive Function in Early Childhood: A Meta-Analysis

The association between executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) has been hotly debated for 20 years. Competing accounts focus on: task demands, conceptual overlap, or functional ties. Findings from this meta-analytic review of 102 studies (representing 9,994 participants aged 3–6 years) ind...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 2014-09, Vol.85 (5), p.1777-1794
Main Authors: Devine, Rory T., Hughes, Claire
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Child
Child development
Child Development - physiology
Child psychology
Child, Preschool
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Developmental psychology
Executive Function - physiology
Gratification
Humans
Language development
Meta analysis
Mind
Preschool children
REVIEW
Statistical variance
Systematic review
Theory of Mind - physiology
Working memory
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Summary:The association between executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) has been hotly debated for 20 years. Competing accounts focus on: task demands, conceptual overlap, or functional ties. Findings from this meta-analytic review of 102 studies (representing 9,994 participants aged 3–6 years) indicate that the moderate association between EF and one key aspect of ToM, false belief understanding (FBU) is: (a) similar for children from different cultures, (b) largely consistent across distinct EF tasks, but varies across different types of false belief task, and (c) is asymmetric in that early individual differences in EF predict later variation in FBU but not vice versa. These findings support a hybrid emergence-expression account and highlight new directions for research.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/cdev.12237