Young children's future-oriented reasoning for self and other: Effects of conflict and perspective

The impact of strategies on young children's saving for the future

The ability to save resources for future use, or saving, begins to emerge around 3 years of age, but children show low rates of saving during the preschool years. Thus, several strategies have been used to improve preschoolers' saving, such as providing a prompt, budgeting, increasing psychological distance, and simulating the future. The current study investigated (a) the development of saving in early childhood, (b) the impact of several saving strategies on children's saving (i.e., budgeting, tracking expenses, and psychological distance), and (c) whether the effectiveness of the strategies changed with age. Here, 3- to 5-year-old Canadian children (N = 254) completed the Saving Board Game, and their parents completed the saving subscale of the Children's Future Thinking Questionnaire. In the Saving Board Game, children were randomly assigned to one of the five strategies: (a) control, (b) budgeting, (c) tracking, (d) adult perspective, or (e) child perspective. An analysis of covariance with age, strategy, and response option order (as a covariate) showed a main effect of age, with 5-year-olds saving more than 3-year-olds. There was no effect of strategy or an interaction between strategy and age on children's token saving. Parent-reported child saving was positively correlated with children's Saving Board Game performance only in the control condition. We consider why these strategies failed to increase children's saving.

Forever young: The end of history illusion in children

The "end of history" illusion in adults (Quoidbach et al., 2013) is an asymmetrical pattern in which people accept that they've changed in the past but don't believe they will change in the future. We explore here whether the same psychological forces that cause the illusion in adults exist in the minds of children. Two studies with 4- to 11-year-olds (N = 256) suggest that they do, even in a within-subject design where the same child is asked questions about the past and the future. A third study (N = 83) finds that this illusion does not persist when children are asked about other people. These studies suggest that even young children believe that although they used to be different in the past, from this point on, they will remain forever young.

Children's expectations about the stability of others' knowledge and preference states

It is a crucial ability to predict others' psychological states across time and contexts. Focusing on cultural inventions such as songs and stories, we contrasted children's attributions of stability with others' knowledge and preference states across time and space and whether these attributions change as a function of children's familiarity with the known/liked items. Children (91 4-year-olds and 97 6-year-olds) were introduced to characters who knew or liked a song, a story, a game and a dance that were either novel or familiar. Children were asked whether the characters would still know/like these when they move to another city or when they grow up to be an adult. Both age groups expected these attributes to be more durable in the moving scenario compared with the growing-up scenario, but this trend became more robust with age. Whereas overall children did not judge knowledge as more durable than preferences, children found knowledge to be more enduring with age. The 6-year-olds' stability attributions also increased when known/liked items were familiar. These results suggest that, across the preschool years, children become more nuanced in their predictions about the future forms of knowledge and preference states.

Inhibition and cognitive flexibility are related to prediction of one's own future preferences in young British and Chinese children

The ability to shift from current to future perspective is pivotal to future-oriented cognition. With two distinct cultural groups, UK (N = 92) and China (N = 90), we investigated 3 to 5-year-olds' understanding of preference changes occurring within themselves and their peers (another child). We administered a battery of representative tasks of executive function and theory of mind to examine their underlying relationships with children's ability to predict future preferences. British 3-year-olds outperformed Chinese children in predicting future preferences, while no country differences were observed between the 4- and 5-year-olds. Across the UK and China, children were more accurate when predicting for their peers than for themselves. They were also more accurate when their current preferences were identified first, i.e. before answering questions about the future. Chinese children outperformed their British counterparts on inhibition and cognitive flexibility tasks whereas there were no Eastern and Western differences in their theory of mind abilities. After controlling for age and children's knowledge of generic adult preferences, children's performance in the inhibition and cognitive flexibility tasks were significantly correlated with the prediction of their own future preferences, but they were not significantly correlated when predicting for a peer. These results are discussed in relation to the conflicts between multiple perspectives and the cognitive correlates of future-oriented cognition.

Anchored in the present: preschoolers more accurately infer their futures when confronted with their pasts

People often speculate about what the future holds. They wonder what will happen tomorrow, and what the world will be like in the distant future. Nonetheless, people's ability to consider future possibilities may be restricted when they consider their own futures. Adults show the 'end of history' illusion, believing they have changed more in the past than they will in the future. Further, preschoolers are even more limited in anticipating future change, as 3-year-olds insist their current desires will persist later in life. These findings suggest a deficit in children's and adults' abilities to simulate alternative possibilities that pertain to themselves. However, we report four experiments (n = 233) suggesting otherwise, at least for children. We find that 3-year-olds accurately infer their futures when prompted to consider their past rather than present preferences. Children also succeed at inferring their past preferences when not shown items they currently prefer. This shows that children can reason about their pasts and futures, though this ability is hindered when they are shown items that anchor them to the present. Our findings suggest that children's difficulties with mental time travel reflect a failure to shift away from the present rather than an inability to simulate alternative possibilities. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.