Tomorrow will be different: Children’s ability to incorporate an intervening event when thinking about the future.

Abstract

Future-oriented thought is ubiquitous in humans but challenging to study in children. Adults not only think about the future but can also represent a future state of the world that differs from the present. However, behavioral tasks to assess the development of future thought have not traditionally required children to do so as most can be solved based solely on representations of the present. To overcome this limitation, we modified an existing task such that children could not simply rely on a representation of the present to succeed (i.e., the correct answer for "right now" was different than the correct answer for "tomorrow"). A sample of 117 4-to 7-year-olds (64 girls and 53 boys) from Ottawa, Canada, and surrounding area, who were predominantly European Canadian (78.6% of sample) and had a family income of over $100,000 CAN (66.1% of sample) participated. Children remembered the information required to solve our task, and there were age-related changes in performance, but only 7-year-olds made an adaptive future-oriented decision significantly more often than chance. With the task modification removed (so the correct answer for the present and the future was the same), even 4-year-olds were above chance. Our work challenges the notion that starting at age 4, children solve behavioral tasks of future thinking by acting on their representations of the future.

Moving beyond “Spoon” tasks: When do children autocue their episodic future thought?

“…In this sense, the child's action (i.e., selecting the correct item) is “future‐directed,” but may not reflect the child having represented the future (cf. Caza et al, 2021; Hoerl & McCormack, 2019). Indeed, as we pointed out earlier, when tasks are structured such that associative processes are “blocked,” it is only by age 5 that children succeed (e.g., Atance et al, 2019).…”

“…Yet, recent data and theory challenge this claim (e.g., Caza et al, 2021; Dickerson et al, 2018; Hoerl & McCormack, 2019). The crux of the argument is that children may pass Spoon tasks by forming an association between the correct item (which is visible at test) and the past problem (e.g., “keys open locks”).…”

A Study and Compare the Futuristic Thinking of Grade 9 Students in Schools of Different Sizes

“…In addition, futuristic thinking helps students prepare themselves for adaptation, make decisions for a better future, and increase awareness of how to adjust and have vision; they can connect themselves with a rapidly changing world. It is crucial especially to children, as stated by Caza, O'Brien, Cassidy, Ziani-Bey, and Atance (2021), "Future-oriented thought is ubiquitous in humans but challenging to study in children". Having more or less futuristic thinking depends on both internal and external factors, especially the environment and context of the schools, e.g., the availability of resources, the number of teachers, teaching efficiency, and the budget for projects to support students in various fields.…”

Negative (but not positive) affective episodic future thinking enhances proactive behavior in 5-year-old children.

“…Many studies using the spoon test reported that children between 4 and 5 years of age acted proactively by choosing or saving the correct object (for a review see Hudson et al, 2011; McCormack & Hoerl, 2020). However, based on more recent research, developmental researchers argue that proactive behavior emerges much later (Atance et al, 2023; Caza et al, 2021; McCormack & Hoerl, 2020). This conclusion aligns with several studies showing that before the age of 6 years, children fail to pass the spoon test (Caza et al, 2021) and do not practice proactively in preparation for an upcoming test even if they receive a respective cue (Brinums et al, 2018; Davis et al, 2016).…”