Playing to develop executive skills in pre-school
Gianluca Daffi, Giulia Crespi, Sara Pillan, Elena Bongarzone, Nicoletta Scionti, Gian Marco Marzocchi
Executive functions are a set of cognitive processes necessary for the organization of purpose-oriented behaviour. The aim of the project is to verify the potential of an intervention to improve executive functions through board games and to evaluate the possible ecological validity of a tool for evaluating these functions, the Shape School Test. About 138 children with an average chronological age of 60 months, attending the last year of various preschools in Lombardy, took part in the experimentation. The organization of the project was divided into three phases: firstly, teachers were trained in the use of the protocol and observation tools; subsequently, there was an evaluation phase, before and after the intervention, during which the Shape School Test was administered to the children and the QUFE-P questionnaire to the teachers; finally, the classroom course was activated, structured as nine weeks of workshop activities with board games and two weekly one-hour meetings. Early data show improvement in children’s executive behaviours and performance. The results suggest continuing in this direction by expanding the sample and inserting a control group in order to consolidate the data obtained.
Keywords
Executive Functions, Pre-schoolers, Board Games, Training, School.
