Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The present study was conducted to determine the effect ofinhibition and working memory training on analogicalgreasoning and theory of mind in young children. We presentthe results of 58 4-year-old children who were given a pre-test and post-test with analogical reasoning tasks and falsebeliefs tasks. Between the pre-test and the post-test a specifictraining was provided. Children were divided in three groupsaccording to the type of the training: a) group with inhibitiontraining; b) group with working memory training; c) controlgroup with conservation tasks training. Each training was 7days long, 25 minutes per child every day. The resultsshowed a significant increase in the post-test results of thegroups undergoing inhibition and working memory trainings.The performance of the children tested was significantlybetter on the post-test in comparison to both the pre-test andthe control group. The results clearly indicated the relation ofinhibition and working memory to analogical reasoning andfalse belief understanding, and also the importance of trainingsuch executive functions in order to increase other cognitiveabilities.