Cognitive flexibility mediates the association between gross motor skills and Level-2 visual perspective taking in preschool children.

Abstract

Understanding how children represent others' visual perspectives is fundamental to early social-spatial cognition. Level-2 visual perspective taking (VPT) requires children to transform their own spatial reference frame to represent how a scene appears from another viewpoint-a process that places substantial demands on executive function (EF). However, the cognitive mechanisms through which bodily experience relates to children's performance on Level-2 VPT tasks in early childhood (i.e., which specific EF components mediate this association) remain poorly understood. The present study examined the embodied account of Level-2 VPT that gross motor skills are associated with Level-2 VPT through one or more EF components-inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Participants were 213 Chinese preschool children aged 3-6 years who completed standardized assessments of gross motor skills, EF components, and Level-2 VPT. Parallel multiple mediation analyses were conducted controlling for child age, gender, and family socioeconomic status. Results showed that gross motor skills were positively associated with all EF components and that cognitive flexibility, but not inhibitory control or working memory, mediated the association between gross motor skills and Level-2 VPT. These findings highlight gross motor skills as an important embodied context for children's Level-2 VPT performance and provide evidence that cognitive flexibility constitutes the primary executive mechanism underlying Level-2 VPT in early childhood.