lecture 6 - future thinking Flashcards
what is future thinking
The capacity to mentally pre-experience future events that involve the self (Atance & O’Neil 2001)
-imagining the future with yourself in it
other terms for future thinking
Future Thinking is how it is used in the child development literature
* Other terms: Episodic future thinking/thought, episodic foresight, prospection
in adult cognition
what does future thinking involve
May be involved in acts of imagination, planning, and prospective memory, however FT is conceived as a distinct capacity
- The above acts neither necessarily entail a mental projection of self into the future, nor are they always involved in future thinking
how is future thinking critical to young children’s development and in daily life
- Fundamental to the emergence of planning
- Adaptive significance of children’s ability to overcome conflict between their current
and future desires
( e.g., saving some sweets now to be available later;
Imagining passing an exam to help plan your time)
what future thinkong assesments are there
-verbal methods : First attempts: Asking children to verbally report future events involving the self
-behavioural methods
future thinking - verbal methods
-Attance and o neil (2005)
- 3-year-olds told that they were going on a trip
- Asked to select items to bring and explain their choices
- 40% of their explanations referenced the future
- Thus, children showered awareness of future possibilities –
There is some future thinking ability by 3-years of age
future thinking - verbal methods
Busby & Suddendorf (2005)
-when do children’s capacity to talk about the future improve?
3-, 4- and 5-year-olds asked to predict something they would do tomorrow
* Parents rated accuracy of their children’s statements
* The 4- and 5-year-olds’ responses were relatively accurate (63-69%)
* those of the 3-year-olds significantly less so (31%)
Thus, children’s capacity to talk about future events improves between 3 – 5
what other situations can 3 year olds be more accurate when talking about future events
Other studies show that 3-year-olds were more accurate when they were asked about specific events (i.e., what will you eat for breakfast?) or about events generated by a parent
Giving more specific scenarios/better cues seems to help younger children
- future thinking seems to emerge around the age of…
-positive development within pre schoolers
3
Positive development within pre-schoolers (so it gets better from 3-5)
what are possible problems with verbal assesment ?
Children’s competence may be masked by inadequate language abilities (know but can’t verbalise) and understanding of temporal terms (i.e. “later” “next”
children may not be able to understand the concept of time
task is vague, more specific like breakfast may be better
future thinking - behavioural methods
-spoon test
To date, Suddendorf et al. and Tulving have advanced the most influential criteria that tasks used to measure future thinking ability need to fulfil The Spoon Test:
- Young girl attends a party with a chocolate pudding served that she can’t have because she has no spoon
- Next night, she takes a spoon to bed to avoid this scenario
The behaviour (spoon to bed) said to be a convincing example of foresight - as it is not cued by regular environment &
- unique scenario – typically not experienced by children
3 key charecteristics of future thinking behavioural measures
- Action is not cued by immediate environment
- Action addresses a need arising only in future
- Novel problem – not encountered before
future thinking assesment - behavioural methods (Suddendorf & Busby, 2005)
-method
3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were shown to the first room:
* Control condition: empty room
* Experimental condition: a puzzle board with no puzzle pieces
After several minutes, children visited second room with a set of
item (including puzzle pieces)
* Told that they were returning to the first room and instructed to
choose one item to bring back to the first room
future thinking assesment - behavioural methods (Suddendorf & Busby, 2005)
-result
- Only 4- and 5-year-olds chose the puzzle pieces significantly
more often in the experimental condition than in the control
condition - Learned from past experience and adjusted their anticipatory
behaviour
evidence of spoon test
Several studies using variants of the spoon test
suggest that: By age 4, children select correct item to address
future problem at above-chance levels (see Scarf, Smith, & Stuart, 2014 for a review)
possible problems with FT behavioural methods / tasks like spoon test
- Studies suggest that retrospective memory (forgetting the problem) rather than foresight, per se, accounted for 3-year-olds’ failures on this task
- Correct item choices may primarily reflect knowledge about the future instead of children’s
ability to mentally pre-experience a future episode (i.e. – what are the puzzle pieces for?)
FT Assessment – Behavioural Methods (Russell, Alexis, & Clayton, 2010)
-method
3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds played tabletop soccer game:
* Easy side vs. Away side (more difficult to research)
Afterwards, told that they would play the game again the
next day but from the Away side
* Instructed to choose necessary items (i.e., a straw and
a stool to stand on to reach)
FT Assessment – Behavioural Methods (Russell, Alexis, & Clayton, 2010)
-results
-problems?
- Only 5-year-olds performed significantly above chance
- Spatial demands? Cognitive load?
Retrospective forgetting ?
FT Assessment – Behavioural Methods (Atance, Louw, & Clayton, 2015)
methods
- 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds visited each of two rooms twice
o No-toy room vs. Toy room - Children were then brought to another location, shown a box of
toys and asked where they would like to put them for their next
visit
FT Assessment – Behavioural Methods (Atance, Louw, & Clayton, 2015)
-results
- Only 4- and 5-year-olds chose the no-toy room significantly more
often than chance - Task requires thinking ahead about where an item is needed rather
than what item is needed - Less likely that children can succeed by associating the correct
item with the past problem, or that correct item serves as a
reminder of the problem
behavioural methods :
by age ___ children act in a way that shows concern for their future selves
4
-* Note this is slightly later than via verbal methods
* The method used can drive different conclusions
why are behavioural methods limited
Need to ensure that children cannot succeed purely based on knowledge
- Tasks are limited because they ask children to decide for a future that is not different from the present
- Researchers need to develop tasks in which an item that is useful now is not the same item that will be
useful in the future - 4-year olds may succeed only when the future they
are asked about does not conflict with the present;
by age 5, such conflict may not pose difficulty
future thinking assesment - Mahy et al. (2014)
-method
-results
did previous studies over estimate future thinking?
Methods:
* 3- and 7-year-olds indicated that they liked pretzels (the study was conducted in Germany!) and were given some to eat
* After consuming the pretzels (which were salty and made the children thirsty), asked what they would prefer to have the next day: pretzels or
water
Results:
* Even 7-year-olds predicted incorrectly that they would want water as opposed to pretzels
tomorrow when they were thirsty today (they wont be this thirsty tommorow)
- Conflict pertains to physiological states
FT Assessment – Questionnaire (Mazachowsky & Mahy, 2020) for parents
- Parent-report on 3- to 7-year-
olds’ future-oriented cognition - (e.g., planning, prospective
memory, episodic foresight (FT),
saving, delay of gratification)
‘childrens future thinking questionairre’
examples
Understands that he/she may be hungry later even though he/she has just eaten a large meal.
Accurately recognizes the responsibilities involved in
taking care of another living thing in the future (e.g., feeding a new pet or watering a plant).
Understands that even though he/she is not interested in an activity now, he/she may be interested in that activity at a later time
(e.g., he/she might not want to play with his/her sibling today, but may want to play with them tomorrow
FT Assessment – Questionnaire (Mazachowsky & Mahy, 2020)
advantages / disadvantages
-High reliability (good Cronbach’s Alpha),
-promising validity
Potential advantages:
* Avoids high verbal demands on
children
* Includes questions that vary in
context to improve ecological
validity
* Allows for more efficient data
collection
* Includes parental insight into
children’s behaviour
(this could also be negative!)
underlting mechanisms explaining future thinking
-episodic memory
- Episodic memory is the basis of future thinking
- One influential theory: We flexibly
recombine details from past events to simulate future episodes
-exp:
- Supported by research with adults fmri :
People’s ability to remember past events overlaps cognitively and neurally with their ability to pre-experience future ones
Underlying Mechanisms – Episodic Memory (Busby & Suddendorf, 2005)
methods
results
Methods
3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were asked:
* “Can you tell me something that you did yesterday?’’
* “Can you tell me something you are going to do tomorrow?”
Parents evaluated correctness
results
* 4-year-olds outperform 3-year-olds on both questions
* No significant differences between 4- and 5-year- olds
* Participants did not perform better on past than future questions – evidence of parallel development of Episode Memory and Future
Thinking
summary of underlying mechanisms - episodic memory
Findings provide some evidence that
episodic memory and future thinking emerge in tandem
Research showing overlap between
capacity to mentally re-experience the past (i.e., episodic memory) and pre- experience the future (i.e., future thinking) has extended theories about memory
Past events comprise a database from which we construct possible futures
