Korean Preschoolers' Advanced Inhibitory Control and Its Relation to Other Executive Skills and Mental State Understanding

• Published in: Child development Vol. 79; no. 1; pp. 80 - 99
• Main Authors: Oh, Seungmi, Lewis, Charlie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Malden, USA Blackwell Publishing Inc 01-01-2008; Wiley-Blackwell; Blackwell Publishing; Blackwell; Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subjects: Age groups; Asian Continental Ancestry Group - psychology; Asian people; Attention; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Child psychology; Child, Preschool; Children; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Ability; Cognitive Processes; Comparative Analysis; Concept Formation; Conflict (Psychology); Cross-Cultural Comparison; Decision Making; Developmental psychology; Empirical Articles; Executive function; Experimentation; Female; Foreign Countries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Games; Humans; Inhibition; Inhibition (Psychology); Korea; Korean culture; Male; Memory; Memory, Short-Term; Mental states; Mind; Parenting - psychology; Personal Construct Theory; Preschool Children; Preschool education; Problem Solving; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Self control; Social Values; Socialization; Studies; United Kingdom; Vocabulary; Working memory; United Kingdom; South Korea; Asia; Korea; Human; Preschool age; Executive function; Skill; Cognition; Cognitive development; Inhibition; Theory of mind; Child; Cognitive control; Social cognition
• ISSN: 0009-3920; 1467-8624
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01112.x

This study assessed executive function and mental state understanding in Korean preschoolers. In Experiment 1, forty 3.5- and 4-year-old Koreans showed ceiling performance on inhibition and switching measures, although their performance on working memory and false belief was comparable to that of Western children. Experiment 2 revealed a similar advantage in a sample of seventy-six 3- and 4-year-old Koreans compared with sixty-four age-matched British children. Korean children younger than 3.5 years of age showed ceiling effects on some inhibition measures despite more stringent protocols and the link between executive function and mental state understanding was not as strong as in the British sample. The results raise key questions about the nature and development of the executive system and its relation to social understanding.