1 Workshop „Lifespan Development of Executive Control“ May 7-9, 2009 - Saarland University, Saarbrücken - Abstracts - Theory of Mind and Executive Control in Preschoolers Gisa Aschersleben & Anne Henning Saarland University, Germany Several studies have demonstrated a relation between preschoolers’ executive functioning and their theory of mind, i.e., their ability to attribute mental states like desires and beliefs to others. Most of these studies, however, limited the assessment of theory of mind development to measuring children’s understanding of false belief. In line with Wellman and Liu’s (2004) assumption of a developmental progression in theory of mind abilities, the aim of the present study was therefore to explore the relation between executive functioning and a wider range of theory of mind abilities. Three- to six-year-old children (N = 200) were given a multitask battery measuring executive functioning and theory of mind as well as various control variables (testing the influence of temperament, language and socioeconomic status, for example). Executive functioning was examined using the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS; Zelazo, 2006). In addition, children were tested with the German version (Hofer & Aschersleben, 2004) of the Theory-of-Mind Scale developed by Wellman and Liu (2004) that covers a range of different developmental attainments (diverse desires, diverse beliefs, knowledge access, real-apparent emotion) as well as a battery of two different false belief tasks. First analyses indicate that responses to the Theory-of-Mind Scale items form a consistent developmental progression and thus replicate the findings of various previous studies. Also, the DCCS score correlated positively with both the Theory-of-Mind Scale score as well as the false belief score. Importantly, these relations remained significant when controlling for language abilities. Finally, results suggest an influence of temperament on theory of mind in that more active children showed slightly reduced Theory-of-Mind Scale scores. Findings will be discussed in the light of an assumed developmental progression in theory of mind abilities and its relation to the development of executive functioning. Cognitive flexibility in preschoolers: Evidence on the underlying processes using explicit and implicit measures Agnès Blaye & Nicolas Chevalier Provence University, France Recent evidence suggests that flexible behaviour involves setting appropriate task goals and accordingly switching or maintaining relevant task sets (e.g., Chevalier & Blaye, in press; Miyake et al., 2004). To further investigate these processes, visual information that children take into account while switching tasks was investigated using eye movements. Four-, 5-, and 6-year-old children and adults were tested on a version of the cued task-switching U N I V E R S I T A S S A R A V I E N S I S