Research Article The Development of Executive Functioning and Theory of Mind

ABSTRACT—Preschoolers ’ theory-of-mind development follows a similar age trajectory across many cultures. To determine whether these similarities are related to similar underlying ontogenetic processes, we examined whether the relation between theory of mind and executive function commonly found among U.S. preschoolers is also present among Chinese preschoolers. Preschoolers from Beijing, China (N 5 109), were administered theory-of-mind and executive-functioning tasks, and their performance was compared with that of a previously studied sample of U.S. preschoolers (N 5 107). The Chinese preschoolers out-performed their U.S. counterparts on all measures of ex-ecutive functioning, but were not similarly advanced in theory-of-mind reasoning. Nonetheless, individual differ-ences in executive functioning predicted theory of mind fo