Executive functions moderated the influence of physical cues on children's empathy for pain: an eye tracking study

Empathy for pain in daily life is more complex than in lab settings and involved higher cognitive abilities. In order to investigate the role of executive function in preschoolers' empathy for pain, we investigated the role of three subcomponents of executive function (inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility) in children's empathy for pain, and recorded the attentional process with eye tracking (N = 46). Results showed that inhibitory control (IC) and working memory (WM) were associated with preschool children's empathy for pain and moderated the effect of physical cue on empathy for pain. With higher IC and WM, there was a higher difference in empathy caused by cue type. Eye-tracking results showed that attention partially mediated the roles of inhibitory control and working memory. These results suggested that both executive function and attention were important for children to make accurate empathic responses for pain.