My future self: Young children's ability to anticipate and explain future states

Abstract

Two experiments examine preschool-aged children's ability to anticipate physiological states of the self. One hundred and eight 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were presented with stories and pictorial scenes designed to evoke thought about future states such as thirst, cold, and hunger. They were asked to imagine themselves in these scenarios and to choose one item from a set of three that they would need. Only one of the items could be used to address the future state. In both experiments, developmental differences were obtained for correct item choices and types of verbal explanations. In Experiment 2, the performance of the 3-and 4-year-olds was negatively affected by introducing items that were semantically associated with the scenarios but did not address the future state, whereas the 5-year-olds' performance was not. Results are discussed with respect to children's understanding of the future, theory of mind, and inhibitory control skills. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Thinking about the future is an integral aspect of human cognition. Much of our behavior is future-oriented. For instance, in choosing a career path, we may anticipate how the various options will contribute to our future happiness and success. We then modify our present actions to bring about these future goals. In this example, we are predicting the emotional consequences, or states, that our particular career choice will engender. However, there are other states, in addition to emotional ones, that are important for us to anticipate. For example, we may anticipate how our behavior will affect our own, or another's, mental state * Corresponding author. Present address:

Pupillometric and behavioral markers of a developmental shift in the temporal dynamics of cognitive control

“…Failures of reactive control, in the absence of proactive mechanisms, might explain children's difficulties in switching from one task to another (34), reasoning about others' thoughts (35), and thinking outside of the moment (12,13). In each case, children may fail to engage the reactive control that is needed to respond appropriately, due to insufficient conflict at the moment that retrieval of relevant information is required.…”

Component processes underlying future thinking

“…This is most strikingly the case in amnesic patients (Hassabis, Kumaran, Vann, & Maguire, 2007;Klein, Loftus, & Kihlstrom, 2002;Tulving, 1985), but the relationship between episodic memory and future thinking abilities has also been observed in other populations, including older adults (Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2008), patients with Alzheimer's disease (Addis, Sacchetti, Ally, Budson, & Schacter, 2009), depressed patients (Williams et al, 1996), and patients with schizophrenia (D'Argembeau, Raffard, & . Developmental research has also revealed that episodic memory and future thinking emerge at the same time, between approximately 3 and 5 years of age (Atance & Meltzoff, 2005;Suddendorf & Busby, 2005). Furthermore, several functional neuroimaging retrieval of relevant elements from long-term memory (executive processes) and processes that flexibly combine and integrate retrieved elements into a coherent representation (recursive and relational processes).…”

The emergence of cognitive short-term planning : performance of preschoolers in a problem-solving task.

“…About future thinking, Atance (2008) reported that between three to five years of age children are able to elaborate plans that evidence behaviors related to future events, such as planning what things to take for a trip in a particular context (Hudson, Shapiro & Sosa, 1995, cited by Atance, 2008. In addition, Atance and Meltzoff (2005) indicate that although children were able to plan the selection of functional objects related to the destination of the trip, they presented more difficulty when asked to explain their choices. Prabhakar and Hudson (2014) examined the ability of children aged three and four to use future-oriented behavior by using a three-dimensional model of a neighborhood where the children should make choices about the trajectories to go from a target house to a target store.…”