An investigation on the effectiveness of chess training on creativity and theory of mind development at early childhood

In recent years, chess training is offered as a compulsory elective course in some pre-schools, whereas it is not offered in some other pre-schools. There are children who attend chess clubs outside of schools. Chess is considered to be a game of intelligence, and its effects on individuals have been the subject of many researches. This study was conducted to investigate whether chess training has any impacts on creativity and theory of mind skills of children. For this purpose, the study was conducted on a total of 87 children including 41 children who received chess training (67.9 months old) and 46 children who didn’t receive any chess training (68.46 months old). As a result, the scores of children who had chess training were found to be higher than scores of other children both in creative thinking and theory of mind tests, and the difference between scores of these children were also found to be statistically significant. Key words: Chess, preschool education, creative thinking, theory of mind.