EFFECT OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTION TRAINING ON YOUNG CHILDREN’S SELECTIVE TRUST

Abstract

Much of what children know comes from others. As not all informants are trustworthy, children need to practice selective trust to sieve out reliable information (Vanderbilt et al., 2011). This study investigated the effect of executive function (EF) training on 3-year-old children’s selective trust. Ninety children were randomly assigned to three conditions: Communicative EF condition where children responded opposite to a verbal cue; Non communicative EF condition where children responded opposite to a pictorial cue; Control condition where children were trained on conservation. Children’s improvement in selective trust and EF were assessed by two selective trust tasks (Object Naming and Object Location) and one EF task (Simon Says). After training, (1) children’s performance in Object Naming significantly improved in the Non-communicative EF and control conditions but not in the Communicative EF condition, (2) children’s performance in Object Location did not significantly improve in any condition and (3) children’s performance in Simon Says did not significantly improve in any condition. The findings show the limited effectiveness of EF trainings in improving children’s selective trust, particularly communicative EF training. Being the first study on EF training to improve children’s selective trust, our study provides empirical support for the EF and communicative intent hypotheses.