The Relationship Among Cool Executive Function, Hot Executive Function And Theory Of Mind In 3-4 Years Old Children

It is an important period of the development of Executive Function(EF) and Theory of Mind(TOM) for 3 to 4 years old children, researchers have brought forward many hypothesis for the similarity between EF and TOM, but these hypothesis are not the same, even contradict each other. The quantitative studies for the relation between EF and ToM are limited to studying the correlation of them only, and the correlation discovered in these studies are not consistent because the tasks are not the same in these studies. The correlation analysis can not determine the "cause link" between the EF and ToM also, so, not only the correlation analysis is needed to confirm the correlation between EF and ToM, training study is also needed to determine the "cause link" between them in further.Some researchers divide the EF into Cool Executive Function(Cool EF) and Hot Executive Function(Hot EF), the Hot EF maybe a new media for the study of the relation between EF and ToM. There lack the studies of correlation analysis among Cool EF, Hot EF and ToM, the training study for the relation of Cool EF, Hot EF and ToM is also insufficient now.this research includes two studies. In the first study, 212 3-4 years old children were administered Cool EF tasks, Hot EF tasks and ToM tasks individually. We examined the characters of the development of Cool EF, Hot EF and ToM, and examined the correlation among Cool EF, Hot EF and ToM. in the second study, 82 children screened out in pre-test were divided into 4 groups, one group was trained Cool EF tasks; one group was trained Hot EF tasks; and two groups were trained ToM tasks, there was one control group also. Comparing the training groups with control group, we found the influence of the Cool EF training on the ToM; the influence of the Hot...