TYPE Brief Research Report PUBLISHED 21 July 2025 DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1564963
OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY
Ann Dowker, University of Oxford, United Kingdom REVIEWED BY
Ricardo Rosas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile CARME Saurina Canals, University of Girona, Spain *CORRESPONDENCE
Anastasia Yakushina anastasia.ya.au@yandex.ru
Chess classes and executive function skills in 5–6 years old children: evidence from cross-sectional study Anastasia Yakushina 1,2*, Elena Chichinina 2 and Aleksandra Dolgikh 1 1
Federal Scientific Center of Psychological and Multidisciplinary Research (FSC PMR), Moscow, Russia, Faculty of Psychology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
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RECEIVED 23 January 2025 ACCEPTED 07 July 2025 PUBLISHED 21 July 2025 CITATION
Yakushina A, Chichinina E and Dolgikh A (2025) Chess classes and executive function skills in 5–6 years old children: evidence from cross-sectional study. Front. Psychol. 16:1564963. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1564963 COPYRIGHT
© 2025 Yakushina, Chichinina and Dolgikh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
The aim of this study was to compare executive function skills in preschool children who were engaged in chess classes with those who were not. The participants were 88 typically developing 5–6-year-old children. There were two groups with 30 boys and 14 girls in each group: a group of chess players and a group of non-chess players. The results indicated that children who participated in chess classes exhibited significantly higher visuospatial working memory scores compared to their non-chess playing counterparts (U = 731, p = 0.05). Moreover, the analysis revealed no significant differences in the characteristics of extracurricular activities undertaken by the two groups. Consequently, the enhanced visuospatial working memory levels observed in the chess-playing group may be due to their participation in chess classes. Taken together, these findings suggest that chess classes may represent a viable method for enhancing visuospatial working memory in preschool-aged children. KEYWORDS
executive function skills, cognitive development, chess classes, extracurricular activities, preschool children
1 Introduction Chess has been proven to be a mentally demanding activity that requires players to possess a range of cognitive skills such as critical thinking and strategic planning (Burgoyne et al., 2016). It has been demonstrated that playing chess can contribute to the development of selfdiscipline and the improvement of intellectual competences (Gobet, 2018). The game demands players to swiftly comprehend the gist of a given position and identify effective moves. These actions require the chess players to plan their own activity and anticipate potential moves of their opponents. Due to this fact the game involves important mental qualities such as visual imagination, memory, quickness of perception and tactical abilities (Gobet, 2018; Vasyukova and Mitina, 2024). The popularity of chess among children is increasing annually (Sadkovkin, 2023). According to the World Chess Federation (FIDE),1 the number of children worldwide engaged in chess exceeds 25 million. In over 30 countries, chess classes are included in the recommendations for the development of preschool and school-age children (Hong and Bart, 2007; Joseph et al., 2016; Sala et al., 2017). Furthermore, the onset of children’s participation
1 https://www.fide.com
Frontiers in Psychology
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