BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Human Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1659576
The Contribution of Executive Functions and Emotion Comprehension Skills to the Development of Pragmatic Competence in 5 to 8-year-old Children
Provisionally accepted
- Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
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A child's pragmatic competence reflects both their social and communicative abilities, as well as their understanding of indirect meaning in words, utterances or discourse. This has led to a growing interest in the development of pragmatics in children. While the contribution of cognitive and emotional developmental aspects to pragmatic competence in general has been explored, the role of the emotion comprehension (EC) and executive functions (EF) in different pragmatic skills is still insufficiently studied. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of children's EF, and EC skills, on four core aspects of pragmatic competence (understanding, production, nonverbal means and communication). Participants were children (N = 1,842) aged 59 to 96 months (M = 73.51, SD = 9.0) and their teachers. Children completed tests assessing their EF (NEPSY-II) and understanding of emotions (Test of Emotion Comprehension), and their teachers completed a questionnaire of the children's pragmatic competence. Through comparison of baseline and extended regression models, it was shown that although EF contribute significantly to all aspects of pragmatic competence, the connections with EC remain at a correlational level. Their contribution to pragmatic competence is not confirmed. These findings can support the development of programs to enhance children's pragmatic competence, targeting educators, parents, and the children themselves.
Keywords: pragmatics, executive functions, test of emotion comprehension, pragmaticdevelopment, preschool age, typically developing children, Regression Models
Received: 07 Jul 2025; Accepted: 09 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Oshchepkova, Shatskaya and Tarasova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ekaterina Oshchepkova, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
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