Browsing by Subject "Executive functions"

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Open Access
Detailed investigation of Turkish children’s diverse belief task performance
(2022-12) Öztürk Mıhcı, İrem
This study investigated Turkish children’s Diverse Belief (DB) task performance, which is one of the tasks in Theory of Mind (ToM) battery. Previous literature found that Turkish children underperformed on the DB task when compared to children from other cultures. In addition, Turkish children did not show the expected age-related increase in the DB task performance, and Turkish children’s DB performance was not related to the other ToM tasks and cognitive variables such as EF. Therefore, the aim was to examine whether the difficulty in the DB task is related to the task structure for Turkish children. The DB task performances and the EF skills of 45 Turkish-speaking children aged between 3 and 5 were assessed. The DB task was manipulated in terms of mental state verbs (e.g., think, guess, and no mental states) and the number of characters in the story (e.g., single, and double seekers). Results showed that Turkish children were not affected by the differences in mental state verbs, but the number of characters in the story affected performance. Children were more successful in the double-seeker conditions when the task was presented with the verb “think” (düşün- in Turkish). In the light of these results, it is possible to infer that the problems regarding Turkish children’s DB performance may be related to the curse of belief rather than Turkish children’s conceptual deficiency in belief understanding.
Open Access
The effects of mindfulness based yoga intervention on preschoolers’ self-regulation ability
(2019-07) Önoğlu Yıldırım, Eda
This thesis taps into one of the significant developments that has effects on children’s academic and social life; self-regulation. Children develop this ability from early childhood to middle childhood. Research has shown that this ability can be enhanced via appropriate interventions and the current study uses mindfulness based yoga as a way to enhance preschoolers’ self-regulation ability. To have a comprehensive measure of self-regulation, a child battery was developed by the researchers. This battery includes tasks that measure cognitive flexibility, interference control, working memory, motor control, and delay of gratification. In addition to this child battery, mother and teacher reported executive function (EF) scales were used. The intervention was conducted with 45 preschoolers; of these; 24 were in the yoga group and 21 were in the waitlist control group. The intervention group of children took yoga 2 times a week for 12 weeks for a total of 15 hours of yoga per child. Both in pre-test and post-test children were tested and the intervention and waitlist control groups were compared with one another. Results of the child battery has shown that children who were in the yoga group performed better on working memory but none of the other aspects of EF that were measured revealed a difference. Teachers reported no difference between the two groups. Lastly, mothers evaluated that the two groups were different in terms of positive affect such that children in the yoga group were evaluated as higher.