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The Development of Inhibitory Control and Theory of Mind in Korean Children

  • THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
  • 2013, 26(1), pp.293-311
  • Publisher : The Korean Society For Developmental Psychology
  • Research Area : Social Science > Psychological Science

Hyeon Jin Lee 1

1영남대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether Korean children's performance on tasks requiring inhibitory control (IC) was related with performance on conflicting-desires and false belief (FB) tasks, and whether such performance is well described by hot and cool dimensions. Ninety-six children participated in the study (48 3-year-olds and 48 4-year-olds). Three different FB tasks (Discrepant Belief, FB Location, and FB Content), two conflicting-desires task , and 6 different inhibitory control tasks (Day/Night, Grass/Snow, Card Sort, Box search 1, Box search 2, and Delay of Gratification) were used. The findings indicated that Korean 3-year-olds performed significantly better on conflicting-desires questions than on FB questions. FB performance significantly improved with age, coming up with 73.5% in 4-year-olds. There were also developmental changes in children's performance on tasks measuring inhibitory control (70% in 3-year-olds vs. 90% in 4-year-olds). CFA on IC performance did not support the two-factor model of cool executive functions and hot executive functions. From the cross-cultural point of view, it is interesting to note that Korean children performed better on the tasks measuring inhibitory control than Western children did. Unlike Western children, Korean children's performance on most inhibitory control tasks was not significantly correlated with FB understanding after controlling for age, gender, and vocabulary. Only performance on the task measuring delay of gratification was significantly correlated with FB. Korean children's performance on some inhibitory control tasks (Day/Night, Grass/Snow, Card Sort, Box search, and Delay of Gratification) was correlated with performance on tasks measuring subject (or perspective) desire understanding. These results suggest that the emergence hypothesis could account for the relations between executive function and theory of mind in Korean data.

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