Development of Episodic Future Thinking: Limits, Flexibility, and Neural Correlates

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The primary goal of the proposed project is to better understand the development and capacity of episodic future thinking (EFT). In Aim 1, I will quantify the capacity of EFT in 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds and examine how capacity changes as a result of age, and identify the neural correlates of EFT processes. In Aim 2, I will examine the developmental origins and neural correlates of early EFT using a novel implicit EFT task with 18- 24-month-old infants. In both Aims, EEG will be collected while children and infants complete the episodic future thinking tasks. The proposed project will be the first to examine the capacity of EFT, the first to examine the developmental origins of EFT in infancy, and the first to examine the neural signatures of EFT in infancy and early childhood. We predict that EFT capacity will increase with development. We also predict that infants (18-24 months) will show evidence of implicitly measured (anticipatory looking) EFT ability. Finally, we expect that similar neural regions (frontal and temporal) that are active during EFT in adults will be active in children and infants, and that EEG coherence (functional connectivity) between these regions will increase as age and EFT capacity increases.