Young Children From Three Diverse Cultures Spontaneously and Consistently Prepare for Alternative Future Possibilities

Abstract

This study examined future-oriented behavior in children (3-6 years; N = 193) from three diverse societies-one industrialized Western city and two small, geographically isolated communities. Children had the opportunity to prepare for two alternative versions of an immediate future event over six trials. Some 3-year-olds from all cultures demonstrated competence, and a majority of the oldest children from each culture prepared for both future possibilities on every trial. Although there were some cultural differences in the youngest age groups that approached ceiling performance, the overall results indicate that children across these communities become able to prepare for alternative futures during early childhood. This acquisition period is therefore not contingent on Western upbringing, and may instead indicate normal cognitive maturation.

Preparation for certain and uncertain future outcomes in young children and three species of monkey

“…The results replicated the finding that most three year old children struggle to prepare for two mutually exclusive event outcomes (Redshaw et al, , ; Redshaw & Suddendorf, ; Suddendorf et al, ), whether presented as a social game in which the experimenter dropped the target into one of two tubes (Study 12a) or whether the exit point is determined by physical means inside of the tube (Study 13.3b). Performance only marginally improved when the forked tube apparatus was made transparent, and the children could monitor the path the target took (1b).…”

“…This behavior demonstrates that they have the fundamental capacity to prepare for at least two mutually exclusive outcomes of the drop. A recent follow‐up study replicated this finding and found a similar developmental pattern in Indigenous South African and Australian children in remote communities, suggesting this is a universal trend in human cognitive development (Redshaw et al, ).…”

Thinking about thinking about time

“…Recursive operations are in principle unbounded, and so humans may be limited primarily by working memory constraints on the number of levels of temporal reasoning they can entertain. Accordingly, alongside increases in working memory capacity (Alloway et al 2006), children become able to prepare for multiple future possibilities (Beck et al 2006; Redshaw et al 2019) before they appear to experience regret (O'Connor et al 2012), which in turn appears to develop before they can anticipate regret (McCormack & Feeney 2015).…”

Young children's capacity to imagine and prepare for certain and uncertain future outcomes

“…Firstly, given the lack of reliance on verbal instructions, the task can easily be administered to children from diverse cultures [24] and even non-human primates [23]. Secondly, given that the preparatory behaviour occurs in the same context as the eventual future event, failure cannot be attributed to problems with the separate capacity to imagine non-present spatial settings [8,13].…”