Abstract
The present study examined characteristics of executive function, particularly those related to execution of a rule-based card sorting task called the Dimensional Change Card Sort task. Participants were children who had developed typically (n=32; 3-5 years old) and others with developmental disabilities (n=20; 2-6 years old). The results from the children who had developed typically showed that a significant number of the 3-year-olds tended to continue using a pre-switch rule during the post-switch phase, whereas, in contrast, nearly all the 5-year-olds successfully switched from the pre-switch rule to the post-switch rule. These results suggest that changes in executive function are related to chronological age (CA). The children with developmental disabilities showed similar tendencies. Other results suggested that the children's behavioral traits may have been related to their success in execution of the task. Further investigation is needed of the relation between the difficulty of the children's executive function in their daily life and their execution of tasks.
