Inhibition and cognitive flexibility are related to prediction of one’s own future preferences in young British and Chinese children

Abstract

The ability to shift from current to future perspective is pivotal to future-oriented cognition. However, the relationship between executive function, theory of mind and the ability to predict future preferences of self and others has received little focus, particularly across different cultures. With two distinct cultural groups in Britain (N = 92 participants) and China (N = 90), we investigated 3 to 5-year-olds’ understanding of their own versus a peer’s current and future preferences. We administered a battery of standardised executive function (inhibition, cognitive flexibility, working memory) and theory of mind tasks to examine the underlying relationship between these cognitive abilities and children’s ability to predict future preferences. Consistent with previous literature, we found significant age-related performance in the future preference task. Furthermore, our study indicates that there may be a universal developmental trajectory in British and Chinese children’s future-oriented cognition. We found that children were more accurate when predicting for their peers than predicting for themselves. Also, their performance improved when they had the opportunity to identity their current preferences before anticipating the future. Chinese children outperformed their British counterparts on cognitive inhibition and cognitive flexibility tasks, with no country-related differences in their working memory, motor inhibition or theory of mind ability. After controlling for age, children’s performance in the inhibition and cognitive flexibility tasks were significantly correlated with the prediction of their own – though not peer’s - future preferences. We discuss these findings in relation to the conflicts between multiple perspectives and the cognitive correlates of future-oriented cognition.