Tracking the Development of Episodic Future Thinking During Early to Middle Childhood

追踪童年早期至中期情景未来思维的发展

• 批准号: RGPIN-2022-03194
• 负责人: Atance, Cristina
• 金额: $ 3.42万
• 依托单位: University of Ottawa
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=764354
• 关键词: Tracking; Development; Episodic; Future; Thinking

Humans think about the future often; we imagine daily events such as the meal we will cook tonight, but also longer-term and more significant events, for example, what we plan to do once we retire. This capacity for episodic future thinking has important implications for decision-making, planning, and self-control in both children and adults. The current research explores young children's ability to independently, or "spontaneously", engage their episodic future thinking to generate adaptive future-directed intentions and actions (e.g., obtaining an item that will be useful later). In a first set of experiments, we will test the extent to which 4- to 7-year-old children can, without any instructions from an adult Experimenter, or cues from their environment, obtain an item that will be useful to address a situation that they will later encounter. In a next experiment, we will ask parents to track their child's future-oriented talk and behaviour in their home environment, so that we can gain a richer understanding of the breadth and flexibility of children's future thinking as it plays out in their day-to-day lives. Using questionnaires, parents of 4- to 7-year-olds will provide detailed descriptions of their child's future-oriented statements and actions. This methodology will allow us to assess whether more spontaneous forms of future thought increase with age, as well as the kinds of future-oriented needs and situations children are most apt to discuss/prepare for. Our final objective is to examine the development of children's "prospective self-control," defined as engaging in strategies to boost one's self-control when future temptation is anticipated - for example, asking your partner to hide the cookies so you will not be tempted to eat them later. This ability is particularly relevant to the current research because it relies on the capacity to mentally project into the future and, critically, spontaneously take action to avoid future temptation. In several experiments we will test 4- to 7-year-olds' understanding that certain contexts (e.g., saving, delaying gratification) pose self-control challenges and, using structured observations, we will determine whether children spontaneously implement advance strategies to address them. The current research involves the creation of novel methodological approaches leading to new knowledge that will allow the scientific community and the public (e.g., parents) to better understand the development of adaptive, future-oriented thinking. This capacity is important to study not least because failures to think ahead (e.g., not saving adequately for retirement) have important consequences to the individual and to society. The better we understand future-oriented thinking and its development, the better we are positioned to developing methods, grounded in the cognitive sciences, to improve its accuracy and adaptiveness.

人类经常思考未来;我们想象日常事件，例如今晚要做的饭，也想象更长期、更重要的事件，例如我们退休后计划做什么。这种情景式未来思维的能力对儿童和成人的决策、计划和自我控制都有重要影响。目前的研究探讨了幼儿独立或“自发”地进行情景性未来思维以产生适应性未来导向的意图和行动的能力（例如，获得稍后将有用的项目）。在第一组实验中，我们将测试4- 7岁的儿童在没有成年实验者的任何指示或来自环境的提示的情况下，获得一个对他们以后遇到的情况有用的物品的程度。在下一个实验中，我们将要求父母跟踪孩子在家庭环境中的未来导向的谈话和行为，以便我们能够更深入地了解孩子未来思维的广度和灵活性，因为它在他们的日常生活中发挥作用。4- 7岁孩子的父母将使用问卷详细描述孩子未来导向的陈述和行动。这种方法将使我们能够评估未来思维的更多自发形式是否会随着年龄的增长而增加，以及儿童最容易讨论/准备的面向未来的需求和情况。我们的最终目标是研究儿童“预期自我控制”的发展，其定义是当预期到未来的诱惑时，参与策略以提高自我控制-例如，要求你的伴侣把饼干藏起来，这样你以后就不会被诱惑吃它们。这种能力与当前的研究特别相关，因为它依赖于在心理上投射未来的能力，并且关键地，自发地采取行动以避免未来的诱惑。在几个实验中，我们将测试4到7岁的孩子对某些语境（例如，储蓄，延迟满足）构成自我控制的挑战，并使用结构化的观察，我们将确定儿童是否自发地实施先进的策略来解决这些问题。目前的研究涉及创造新的方法，导致新的知识，使科学界和公众（例如，父母），以更好地了解适应性，面向未来的思维发展。这种能力对研究很重要，尤其是因为未能提前思考（例如，没有足够的退休储蓄）对个人和社会都有重要的影响。我们对未来导向思维及其发展的理解越好，我们就越有能力开发以认知科学为基础的方法，以提高其准确性和适应性。