The Development of Executive Function

condition but showed no difference between games in the object condition, the children showed no difference between games in the abstract condition but made fewer errors in Game 1 of the object condition. This effect was larger for the younger children. The Effects of Verbal and Nonverbal Ability in the SOPT A significant main effect of condition suggests that verbal factors are playing a role in SOPT performance, with verbal labelling improving performance in the object condition. To assess this further, individual differences in the children‟s verbal and nonverbal abilities were compared to performance on the SOPT. If verbal skills are important in the task then we would expect that children with a high verbal ability will perform well in the object condition of the SOPT. Correlations between the different measures were calculated and are presented in Table 4.2. The error and span measures correlated highly, suggesting that both were measuring the ability to maintain and monitor items in working memory. Vocabulary and Matrices, measuring verbal and nonverbal abilities respectively, correlated significantly with both error and span measures for both conditions. Once chronological age was controlled for however, the only relationship which remained significant was between Matrices and the object condition of the SOPT.