Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate the associations of executive functions (EFs) with intelligence, phonological awareness (PA), and early numeracy (EN) in fifty high-ability preschool children, aged 58 to 68 months (M = 62.5, SD = 2.7). Nonverbal and verbal measures of general intellectual ability, tests of PA and EN skills as well as measures of short-term memory, verbal working and visuospatial memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility were administered to collect the data. A series of Canonical Correlation Analyses (CCA) were performed on eight sets of variables to examine their relationship in depth. Additionally, hierarchical linear regressions were used to investigate the possible predictor variables for PA and EN skills. The analysis revealed that verbal working memory and cognitive flexibility are statistically significant predictor variables for phoneme segmentation and phoneme deletion. Additionally, short-term memory predicts phoneme discrimination, while verbal working memory and verbal intellectual ability predict EN skills. Findings are discussed concerning their implications in the education of high-ability preschool children.