ABSTRACT
Executive accounts of theory of mind (ToM) development have recently emerged as competition to conceptual change accounts. Executive functions (EF), broadly defined, refer to the cognitive functions that underlie goal-directed behavior. The main dimensions of EF include inhibitory control, working memory and attentional flexibility. Children at risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) who had deficits in various EF tasks had intact second-order ToM in a study by Perner. The ADHD children had been diagnosed by child psychiatrists and were recruited through a school for children with learning and behavioral problems and through the child psychiatry ward of the University of Wurzburg, Germany. ADHD children committed a transgression significantly more often than normally developing children did in the snack delay and gift delay tasks. Research on the relation between advanced ToM development and EF indicates that, among normally developing children, second-order ToM performance may be as strongly correlated with performance on a range of EF tasks as is first-order performance.
