Empathy is a basic human ability crucial for our social life and for understanding and sharing other’s feelings. Various models highlight the emergence of different components of empathy from an early age; in particular, Hoffman (1987) distinguished different components of empathy developing from preschool age: Emotion Contagion, Attention to others’ feelings and Prosocial Action.

Furthermore, the preschool age is crucial for the development of Executive Functions (EFs), that is, a family of adaptive, goal-directed, top-down mental processes that are supported by the prefrontal cortex. Miyake and colleagues (e.g., Miyake et al., 2000) identified three EFs core components: inhibition, shifting, and updating, also suggesting the possibility that these EFs core components are linked to working memory capacity (WMC).

Some recent studies (Huang et al., 2017; Zeng et al., 2021) investigated the links between empathy, EFs and WMC recognizing the crucial role of the inhibition component in social cognition processes.

In the Italian context, only few studies examined the relationships between empathy, EFs and WMC in preschoolers. To fill this gap, we conducted a pilot study with the main aim to investigate the relationships between different components of empathy (emotion contagion, attention to others’ feeling and prosocial action), the core components of EFs (inhibition, shifting and updating) and working memory capacity (WMC) in a sample of preschoolers. Specifically, we involved a total of 73 typically developing children (41-76 months; 43.8% female) attending from Northwest Italy preschools. We explored the different components of empathy by using the translated teacher-report version of the Empathy Questionnaire (EmQue).

A battery of EFs and WMC tasks was individually administered to the children. In addition, teachers filled out the Children Executive Functioning Inventory (CHEXI). Fluid intelligence, measured by Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM) and receptive vocabulary, evaluated with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - Third Edition (PPVT-III) were employed as control variables.

The results highlighted links between the empathy components Emotion Contagion and Attention to others' feelings and the cognitive processes investigated (EFs and WMC). In particular, the relationships between the components of empathy and the inhibition component appeared to be particularly significant. Additionally, the results showed that teachers perceived females as more tending to prosocial actions, as well as more engaged in terms of inhibition, although direct measures don’t confirm this result. Furthermore, the correlations between the components of empathy, EFs, and WMC appear to be more significant in the male sample.

As well as being of theoretical interest, these findings could also have practical implications. Knowing the different components of empathy and their relationships with EFs and WMC, it would be possible to design and deploy specific interventions in the educational context to enhance empathy and its association with cognitive abilities. This kind of intervention would be beneficial for both typical and atypical developing children, supporting self-regulation and emotional processes from an early age.

Therefore, the findings may have a practical benefit in daily educational practice, as well as in early childhood teachers’ practice.

Keywords: Empathy, executive functions, working memory capacity, preschool.