Preschoolers’ executive function boots the development of empathy: one-year cross-lagged panel analysis

ABSTRACT

Empathy is crucial for our social life, with evidences suggesting that executive function is the cognitive basis of empathy. However, debates about the causal relationship between executive function and empathy still exist. A two-wave and one-year longitudinal follow-up experiment is conducted to investigate this problem, mainly focusing on preschoolers as executive function and empathy develop rapidly in preschoolers. A one-year cross-lagged panel analysis results found that preschoolers’ empathy, mainly cognitive empathy, was predicted by inhibitory control. In line with previous studies, these results imply that inhibitory control is the cognitive basis of preschoolers’ empathy and future educational practices and training studies should be considered.W

KEYWORDS:

• Executive function
• inhibitory control
• working memory
• cognitive flexibility
• empathy
• cross-lagged analysis
• preschooler

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Hunan Normal University: [grant number 2020092412].

Notes on contributors

Xiao Zeng

Xiao Zeng studies the psychological development of children, the mood, and the health of teachers.

Lijun Yang

Lijun Yang is the executive director of the China Preschool Education Research Association. Her research interests include children's psychological development and kindergarten curriculum.

Xiaoqian Zhu

Xiaoqian Zhu mainly studies human social cognition, with special attention to the development of children's empathy ability.

Ke Zhou

Ke Zhou mainly studies children's social cognition.

Juan Zhang

Juan Zhang mainly studies the social development of children.

Zhiqiang Yan

Zhiqiang Yan has extensive research experience in the social cognitive development of preschool and school-age children.