Connecting the Dots Between Past and Future: Constraints in Episodic Future Thinking in Early Childhood

Preschoolers have limited capacity to use past experiences to prepare for the future. Two experiments sought to further understand these limitations. Experiment 1 (N = 42) showed that 3‐ to 4‐year olds’ difficulty performing anticipated future actions was constrained by their memory for relevant pas...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child development 2020-03, Vol.91 (2), p.e315-e330
Main Authors: Prabhakar, Janani, Ghetti, Simona
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Child
Child, Preschool
Childhood
Children
Female
Forecasting
Humans
Imagination
Male
Memory, Episodic
Mental Recall
Past experiences
Preschool children
Projection
Thinking
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Summary:Preschoolers have limited capacity to use past experiences to prepare for the future. Two experiments sought to further understand these limitations. Experiment 1 (N = 42) showed that 3‐ to 4‐year olds’ difficulty performing anticipated future actions was constrained by their memory for relevant past actions, especially those including temporal information. Experiment 2 (N = 94) sought to determine whether preschoolers fail to see that past experiences can inform future‐oriented actions. When the connection between the past and future was experimentally heightened, future thinking accuracy improved, but only if preschoolers remembered past experiences. The results indicate that past recall is a prerequisite for future thinking but failure to bridge past and future further accounts for observed limitations in future thinking in early childhood.
ISSN:0009-3920
1467-8624
DOI:10.1111/cdev.13212