This study examined the relationship between working memory capacity and narrative abilities in 5–6-year-old children. 269 children were assessed on their visual and verbal working memory and performed in a story retelling and a story creation (based on a single picture and on a series of pictures) tasks. The stories were evaluated on their macrostructure and microstructure. The results revealed a significant relationship between both components (verbal and visual) of working memory and the global indicators of a story’s macrostructure—such as semantic completeness, semantic adequacy, programming and narrative structure—and with the indicators of a story’s microstructure, such as grammatical accuracy and number of syntagmas. Yet, this relationship was systematically stronger for verbal working memory, as compared to visual working memory, suggesting that a well-developed verbal working memory leads to lexically and grammatically more accurate language production in preschool children.

The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between cooperative play and cognitive development in preschool age. The study involved 56 children aged 5—6 years (29 boys and 27 girls) of Moscow kindergartens. The article describes the main parameters of the observations of peer play (indicators of substitution, implementation of plan, play interaction). Analysis of the results revealed the presence of two correlation pleiades. The first one shows significant relationships between a child’s ability to draw up a story and different play aspects associated with the development of the internal action plan and visual thinking (sustainability of play plot, subject substitution, substitution of playing space, organizing character of interaction, level of ideas). The second correlation pleiade centers around the unfolding of the play idea which is linked with the ability to understand emotions of others, with self-regulation of cognitive processes, and with visual memory. The obtained data show the presence of two sources of development in child play: one is associated with visual-imaginative thinking, and the other with partner interaction.

This study analyzed connections between different components of executive functions (EF; inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility) among 1,075 preschool children in Moscow. The results suggested greater heterochronicity in different EF component levels for girls compared with boys. Factor analysis showed the best fit for a three‐factor model.

As the use of electronic media device is becoming widespread in preschool children, there is an obvious need to explore this new social situation of development and to analyse the effects of digital environment on children’s personality and emotional development.The paper presents data from 65 studies conducted from 2010 to 2020 which were aimed at exploring the effects of screen time and electronic content on child development at preschool age.The results suggest that viewing of inappropriate content is associated with higher aggression levels and lower levels of social skills and prosocial behavior, whereas viewing of appropriate content is associated with higher prosocial behavior and social skills level.The amount of viewing (screen time) is related to higher levels of aggressive behavior and lower levels of prosocial behavior, social skills and cognitive aspects of personality and emotional development.

This research focused on the connection between such factors of the active screen time of preschoolers as the time spent playing computer games and parental participation in children’s computer games on imagination in 5–6 years old children. The mothers of 772 children were asked to fill out questionnaires where they described how their children interact with gadgets. 371 of these children also participated in the test that assessed productive imagination using complete the drawing task (such parameters as flexibility, originality, elaboration were assessed). As a result of the study, no relationship was found between imagination and the time spent by preschoolers playing computer games. At the same time, this study revealed significant relationships between imagination and the characteristics of parental participation in the gadgets’ usage by preschoolers. The research showed that imagination flexibility scores are significantly higher in children who use gadgets with siblings or peers than in those who often play alone or with an adult.

Previous research has indicated that young children’s executive functions (EFs) can be bolstered through role-play [e.g. the ‘Batman^™ effect’; White et al.]. However, what is not clear is whether it is the role-playing of another’s perspective, or something about the role played, which is responsible for the Batman^™ effect. The current experiment investigated the effects of role-play of different roles (protagonist, villain, and sage) with different traits (benevolence, malevolence, skill) on 80 five- to six-year-old children’s EF performance. Results indicated significantly improved cold – but not hot – EF scores for the Sage and Control groups. Consistent with Vygotsky’s theory that children transfer imagined content into real-world applications, this study provides preliminary evidence that pretending to be someone with EF skills can bolster young children’s cold EF performance.