Development of Episodic Prospection: Factors Underlying Improvements in Middle and Late Childhood

Adolescent mental time travel predicting meaning in life: The potential mediating role of self-continuity

INTRODUCTION

Knowing who we are and what we are living for helps us to better adjust in everyday life and confront negative life events, especially for adolescents who are going through critical developmental periods when changes in life could bring both psychopathology risk yet opportunity to achieve a better self. The current study focused on mental time travel, the mental visit to the past or future, and examined the impact on adolescents' perceived meaning in life, with the potential mediating factor of self-continuity.

METHODS

A total of 1543 high school students aged 12 to 18 years old (Mage = 15.02, SDage = 1.58, 52% girls) from Jiangsu Province, China were recruited in a two-wave longitudinal survey that separated by an interval of 6 months. Participants reported their proneness to engage in nostalgia or future prospection at T1 and sense of self-continuity at T2, while the perceived meaning in life were reported at both time points. The latent structural equation models were established with items as indicators for all study variables.

RESULTS

Mental time travel, including both nostalgia and future prospection, facilitated adolescent meaning in life via increased self-continuity, except that future prospection showed only positive indirect effect, while nostalgia demonstrated direct yet negative impact on meaning in life after accounting for the positive mediation effect.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings highlighted the distinct effects of the past- and future-oriented mental time travel on adolescent meaning in life, and provided insights for promoting adolescent psychological adjustment.

Of popsicles and crackers: when spatio-temporal memory is not integrated into children's decision-making

Prior research has used innovative paradigms to show that some non-human animal species demonstrate behavioural choices (i.e. foraging for a food item at a specific location, and at a time that guarantees it has not yet decayed), reflecting episodic-like or 'WWW' memory (memory for 'what' happened, 'where' and 'when'). These results raised the question of whether similar approaches could be used to examine memory in young children in order to reduce verbal demands. The present research examines the extent to which children's WWW memory aligns with memory-based choices in 3- to 5-year-olds (n = 95; study 1) and in 7- to 11-year-olds and adults (n = 168; study 2). Results indicate that preschoolers' struggle with choice-based tasks probably reflects difficulty integrating their WWW memory with an understanding that certain items decay over time. Moreover, a convergence between verbal recall measures and choice-based measures is observable in 7-year-olds and beyond, reflecting a stronger integration of memory signals, understanding of state transformation, and decision-making. This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.

Embodying anticipated affect enhances proactive behavior in 5-year-old children

Imagining anticipated affects can foster future-oriented behavior in adults. However, children often still have difficulties in vividly imagining how they will feel in a specific episode (affective episodic future thinking [EFT]). We investigated whether enacting anticipated affects helps children to imagine how they will feel and whether this enhances proactive behavior in turn. A total of 90 5-year-old children were randomly assigned to one of three groups. In the embodiment group, children were instructed to imagine and physically enact how positive and negative they would feel in an upcoming performance test. Children in the EFT-only group underwent a similar procedure but did not enact their future affect. In the control group, children were reminded of the upcoming test only without receiving a prompt to imagine the upcoming test. After the manipulation, children had the opportunity to play one of three games. One game was relevant for the test. Children's choice to play the relevant game in advance of the test served as an indicator for proactive behavior. Mechanisms (e.g., detailedness of the envisioned event) and moderators (theory of mind and neuroticism) of the link between embodied EFT and proactive behavior were explored. Children in the embodiment group chose the relevant game above chance level, but they did not choose the relevant game more often than children in the EFT-only group and the control group. Those results were independent of the assumed mediators and moderators.

Episodic foresight, episodic memory, and executive functions in children engaged with Child Protective Services: The role of cumulative risk

Previous studies have determined that exposure to risk and adversities may impair children's cognitive abilities. In particular, children engaged with Child Protective Services (CPS) seem to be at greater risk for enhanced detrimental effects resulting from the cumulative risk factors to which they are exposed. However, little is known about children's future thinking when they face adverse circumstances, and it is not clear how the associations among episodic foresight abilities, episodic memory, and executive functions work with children under such circumstances. The current study describes the episodic foresight abilities of CPS-involved school-aged children, its association with other cognitive abilities, and how this association is affected by the exposure to cumulative risk and adversity factors. Episodic foresight, episodic memory, executive functions, and a composite of cumulative risk factors were analyzed in a sample of 95 school-aged children engaged with CPS in Portugal. Results suggest the detrimental effect of cumulative risk on the episodic foresight abilities of CPS-involved children. Episodic memory and cognitive flexibility were significant predictors of episodic foresight abilities, and cumulative risk exposure moderated the relation between episodic memory and episodic foresight. The current study provides a better understanding of the influences of multiple adversities on CPS-involved children's episodic foresight abilities and related cognitive outcomes.

Episodic future thinking and psychopathology: A focus on depression and suicide risk

Episodic future thinking (EFT), the ability to imagine future autobiographical events, is both an everyday and clinically significant cognitive process. With a focus on depression and suicidality, here we discuss evidence connecting EFT with psychopathology. Emotional valence of imagined future events has emerged as the most widely established feature of EFT detected to date, with less positive EFT being associated with depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. This pattern may not be merely a byproduct of sadness or anhedonia. Promising directions for future research include clarifying the temporal association between EFT and clinical outcomes, investigating the potential benefits and drawbacks of positive EFT, and refining assessments for youth to measure EFT either preceding or soon after onset of psychopathology.

Examining Highly Novel Positive Future Thinking in Suicidal and Nonsuicidal Adolescents

OBJECTIVE

Although traditionally considered protective, certain forms of positive future thinking (PFT) may be associated with greater suicide risk. In this first a priori investigation of potential maladaptive forms of PFT, we tested whether novelty (i.e., dissimilarity to past experiences) and lack of attainment of the imagined positive future may explain counterintuitive associations between PFT and suicidal ideation (SI).

METHOD

At baseline, adolescents (N = 76, ages 12-19) completed a behavioral measure of PFT (i.e., Future Thinking Task) and rated the novelty of each positive future thought. At the 3-month follow-up, we measured attainment of the positive future events generated at baseline by asking adolescents whether the event happened and, if it did, if it was as positive as had been imagined at baseline. Past-month SI severity was assessed at baseline, 3 months, and 6 months.

RESULTS

PFT, only when highly novel, was associated with stronger recent SI severity at baseline, above and beyond depressive symptoms. It also significantly predicted recent SI severity 3 and 6 months later, although not after we controlled for baseline SI severity. Novelty of the imagined positive future was not related to whether the event happened. However, when those events did happen, adolescents who imagined more novel events tended to experience them less positively than imagined, which separately predicted stronger recent SI severity at the 6-month follow-up.

CONCLUSIONS

Results support that PFT is a heterogeneous construct that is not uniformly beneficial. Better understanding potential pitfalls of PFT may help us discern how to best incorporate PFT into clinical interventions.

Who feels happier right now?: The impact of temporal distance on children's judgements of emotional intensity

Do children consider temporal distance in their reasoning about the world? Using a novel method that relied minimally on verbal ability, we asked N = 106 3- to 6-year-olds to judge which of two characters felt more 'happy'/'sad' right now: one engaging in a pleasant/unpleasant activity tomorrow or another engaging in this same activity when they are a year older. That is, we examined whether children understood that the closer in time a future event, the more intense the currently felt emotion. Starting at age 4, children correctly judged which child was more 'happy'/'sad' right now. However, 4- to 6-year-olds tended not to explain their judgements by referring to temporal distance, per se. Results suggest that children are sensitive to temporal distance early in development, but do not yet verbally express this understanding. Implications for theories about children's future thinking and future areas of research are discussed.

From the lab to the classroom: Improving children's prospective memory in a natural setting

BACKGROUND

Laboratory-based studies have shown that children's ability to remember intentions (i.e., prospective memory; PM) can be improved by asking them to imagine performing the PM task beforehand (i.e., episodic future thinking; EFT) or to predict their PM performance. Moreover, combining the two strategies resulted in an additional improvement in children's PM performance. However, the effectiveness of these encoding strategies on real-life PM tasks is still unknown.

AIMS

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of EFT instructions, performance predictions, and of their combination on children's PM in a natural setting, namely in the classroom.

SAMPLE

Twelve classes composed by a total of 121 children (53% females) aged between seven and 9 years participated to the study.

METHODS

As a PM task, children were asked by their teachers to deliver a letter to their parents and to bring it back to school the next day. Children were divided into four groups: control, prediction, EFT, and the EFT + prediction group. Parent reports on children's everyday prospective and retrospective memory failures were also collected.

RESULTS

Results showed that encoding strategies were effective in enhancing children's PM performance. However, differences compared to previous laboratory-based findings emerged since predicting PM performance resulted to be most effective in enhancing real-life PM performance. Moreover, parent reports were related to children's PM performance.

CONCLUSIONS

These novel findings highlight the importance of studying PM interventions in natural settings in order to increase their ecological validity and inform educational practices.

Remembering history: Autobiographical memory for the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, psychological adjustment, and their relation over time

This longitudinal study examined age- and gender-related differences in autobiographical memory about the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and whether the content of these memories predicted psychological adjustment over time. A sample of 247 students (Mage = 11.94, range 8-16 years, 51.4% female, 85.4% White) was recruited from public and private schools in Denmark and assessed three times from June 2020 to June 2021. The findings showed that memories weakened over time in detail and emotional valence. Additionally, psychological well-being decreased over time, with adolescent females faring the worst. Critically, memories including higher levels of negative affect and factual information about COVID-19 and the lockdown predicted worse psychological well-being over time, underscoring aspects of autobiographical memory that might help attenuate the negative consequences of the lockdown.

Young children's adaptive partner choice in cooperation and competition contexts

Choosing adequate partners is essential for cooperation, but how children calibrate their partner choice to specific social challenges is unknown. In two experiments, 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 189, 49% girls, mostly White, data collection: 03.2021-09.2022) were presented with partners in possession of different positive qualities. Children then recruited partners for hypothetical tasks that differed with respect to the quality necessary for success. Children and the selected partner either worked together toward a common goal or competed against each other. From age 5, children selectively chose individuals in possession of task-relevant qualities as cooperative partners while avoiding them as competitors. Younger children chose partners indiscriminately. Children thus learn to strategically adjust their partner choice depending on context-specific task demands and different social goals.

Temporal Asymmetry of Pleasant and Unpleasant Feelings Among Chinese Adolescents

Previous studies have shown that anticipation induces more emotions than retrospection, known as temporal emotion asymmetry. However, the majority of previous studies have been confined to Western contexts. Eastern populations tend to emphasize the past more than their Western counterparts and may exhibit distinct forms of temporal emotion asymmetry. Therefore, we conducted an investigation involving Chinese adolescents. Our research encompassed two experiments, investigating Chinese adolescents' temporal emotion asymmetry from a self-perspective (Experiment 1; N = 124) and an other-perspective (Experiment 2; N = 162). Participants were prompted to retrospect and anticipate events that elicited pleasant or unpleasant feelings. The results revealed that, whether from a self-perspective or an other-perspective, retrospection of past positive events elicited greater pleasure than the anticipation of future positive events. However, concerning adverse events, under a self-perspective, anticipation induced more displeasure than retrospection (Experiment 1); under an other-perspective, retrospection induced more displeasure than anticipation (Experiment 2). Our findings provide some support for the construal level theory, fading affect bias, and mobilization-minimization hypothesis of event cognition. Based on these results, retrospection seems to be a potential means for regulating the emotions of Chinese adolescents.

Asynchronous development of memory integration and differentiation influences temporal memory organization

Adults remember items with shared contexts as occurring closer in time to one another than those associated with different contexts, even when their objective temporal distance is fixed. Such temporal memory biases are thought to reflect within-event integration and between-event differentiation processes that organize events according to their contextual similarities and differences, respectively. Within-event integration and between-event differentiation are hypothesized to differentially rely on binding and control processes, which may develop at different ages. To test this hypothesis, 5- to 12-year-olds and adults (N = 134) studied quartets of image pairs that contained either the same scene (same-context) or different scenes (different-context). Participants remembered same-context items as occurring closer in time by older childhood (7-9 years), whereas different-context items were remembered as occurring farther apart by early adolescence (10-12 years). The differential emergence of these temporal memory biases suggests within-event integration and between-event differentiation emerge at different ages. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Children are less likely than adults to use contextual information (e.g., location) to organize their continuous experience in memory, as indicated by temporal memory biases. Biases reflecting within-event integration (i.e., remembering elements with a shared context as occurring closer together in time) emerged in late childhood. Biases reflecting between-event differentiation (i.e., remembering elements from different contexts as occurring farther apart in time) emerged in early adolescence. The differential emergence of biases reflecting within-event integration and between-event differentiation suggests they are distinct, yet complementary, processes that support developmental improvements in event memory organization.

Young children's conceptualization of empirical disagreement

Chinese and American children aged 5-11 years (total N = 144) heard two child informants make conflicting empirical claims about each of 4 scenarios. For example, one informant claimed that a ball would float when dropped in water whereas the other informant claimed that it would sink. Children were asked to judge whether each informant could be right, and to justify their overall judgment. In both samples, there was a change with age. Older children often said that each informant could be right whereas younger children, especially in China, were more likely to say that only one informant could be right. Nevertheless, in the wake of decisive empirical evidence (e.g., the ball was shown to sink when dropped in water), almost all children, irrespective of age, drew appropriate conclusions about which of the two informants had been right. Thus, with increasing age, children differ in their prospective - but not in their retrospective - appraisal of empirical disagreement. Absent decisive evidence, older children are more likely than younger children to suspend judgment by acknowledging that either of two conflicting claims could be right. We argue that children's tendency to suspend judgment is linked to their developing awareness of empirical uncertainty, as expressed both in the justifications they give when judging the disagreement and in their own beliefs about the scenarios. Implications for children's understanding of disagreement are discussed.

Improving children's ability to remember intentions: a literature review on strategies to improve prospective memory during childhood

Children often fail to remember executing intentions because prospective memory (PM) does not completely develop until late adolescence or young adulthood. PM failures are often observed in children and can have negative consequences on their everyday lives. Thus, in the last 50 years, various strategies to support children's PM have been designed and evaluated, such as prompting children to use different encoding modalities, such as verbal, visual, and enacted modalities, or encoding strategies, such as implementation intentions, episodic future thinking (EFT), and performance predictions, as well as providing children with verbal and visual reminders. However, not all these interventions have shown to efficiently enhance PM performance during childhood. The present literature review is aimed at summarizing these interventions and critically examining their effectiveness from a developmental perspective and by considering underlying mechanisms. The type of PM task (event-, time-, and activity-based), cognitive resource demands, and processing overlaps are also considered. Finally, directions for future research and possible applications in everyday life will be discussed.

Using an episodic specificity induction to improve children's future thinking

Episodic future thinking (EFT) is the ability to subjectively pre-experience a specific future event. Future-oriented cognition in young children positively predicts physical health and financial status later in life. Can EFT be improved in children, even temporarily? Developmental research emphasizes the importance of thinking about one's own near future to enhance EFT, whereas research in adults suggests benefits reside in constructing a richly detailed event. We bridged the two perspectives to examine whether a procedure, the "episodic specificity induction" (ESI), could be adapted to encourage an episodic mode of thinking in children, benefitting performance on a variety of subsequent EFT tasks. The present study implemented a child-friendly ESI in which children mentally simulated a future event and were probed for specific details about it. We randomly assigned 66 children aged 6 and 7 years to one of two conditions: (1) ESI, in which children imagined "having breakfast tomorrow" in detail, describing surroundings, people, and actions, or (2) a Control condition (i.e., no construction), in which children simply viewed and described a picture of another child having breakfast. Children then completed a series of future thinking tasks assessing prospective memory, recollection/imagination of events, delay of gratification, and planning. Our ESI was successful in promoting the construction of a detailed event, and subsequently increasing the number of details of recollected and imagined events on an outcome task as compared to a control condition. Nonetheless, the effect of ESI was smaller than expected - a finding that fits with recent work suggesting that such interventions may be too cognitively taxing for young children and/or that benefits may hinge on further development in episodic processes. We discuss possible modifications to the induction and implications for EFT amelioration in young children.

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

Much developmental (and comparative) research has used Tulving's Spoon test (i.e., whether an individual will select an item needed to solve a future problem) as the basis for designing tasks to measure episodic future thinking, defined as the capacity to mentally pre-experience the future. There is, however, intense debate about whether these tasks successfully do so. Most notably, it has been argued that children may pass (i.e., select an item with future utility) by drawing on non-episodic, associative processes, rather than on the capacity to represent the future, per se. Although subsequent developmental tasks have sought to address this limitation, we highlight what we argue is a more fundamental shortcoming of Spoon tasks: they prompt future-directed action making it impossible to determine whether children have used their episodic future thinking to guide their behavior. Accordingly, we know little about children's thought about the future that is independently generated (i.e., without prompting), or autocued, and is subsequently reflected (and measurable) by children's actions. We argue that this capacity is a critical, and heretofore overlooked, transition in future-oriented cognition that may not occur until middle childhood. We further hypothesize that it is reliant on children developing richer and more detailed future event representations, along with the necessary cognitive control to transform these representations into actions that serve to benefit their future selves. The time is ripe for researchers to explore this aspect of cognitive development and we suggest several novel approaches to do so. This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Cognitive Development.

Self-initiating and applying episodic foresight in middle childhood

This study provides an important extension to the growing literature on prospection in children by providing the first test of whether one's ability to engage in the functional (as opposed to the purely phenomenological) aspect of episodic foresight improves across middle childhood. Of the various forms of prospection, episodic foresight has been proposed to be one of the most flexible and functionally powerful, defined as the ability to not only imagine future events (simulative aspect) but also use those imaginings to guide behavior in the present (functional aspect). The current study tested 80 typically developing children aged 8 to 12 years using an extensive cognitive battery comprising Virtual Week Foresight, the Autobiographical Interview, and a series of crystallized and fluid intelligence measures. Whereas data indicated age-related improvements in detecting future-oriented problems and taking steps in the present in service of solving these, all children in this age bracket demonstrated a similar capacity for problem resolution (i.e., the ability to subsequently solve successfully identified problems). Results also revealed the importance of broader crystallized and fluid intelligence, but not episodic memory or episodic future thinking, in engaging in this capacity. Research is now required to understand the real-life consequences of episodic foresight during this developmental period as well as the ways in which parents and teachers can help to foster this capacity and consequently help to support children's growing desire for independence during this time.

Prospection and delay of gratification support the development of calculated reciprocity

Humans frequently benefit others strategically to elicit future cooperation. While such forms of calculated reciprocity are powerful in eliciting cooperative behaviors even among self-interested agents, they depend on advanced cognitive and behavioral capacities such as prospection (representing and planning for future events) and extended delay of gratification. In fact, it has been proposed that these constraints help explain why calculated reciprocity exists in humans and is rare or even absent in other animals. The current study investigated the cognitive foundation of calculated reciprocity by examining its ontogenetic emergence in relation to key aspects of children's cognitive development. Three-to-five-year-old children from the US (N = 72, mostly White, from mixed socioeconomic backgrounds) first completed a cognitive test battery assessing the cognitive capacities hypothesized to be foundational for calculated reciprocity. In a second session, children participated in a calculated reciprocity task in which they could decide how many resources to share with a partner who later had the opportunity to reciprocate (reciprocity condition) and with a partner who could not reciprocate (control condition). Results indicated a steep developmental emergence of calculated reciprocity between 3 and 5 years of age. Further analyses showed that measures of delay of gratification and prospection were important predictors of children's rate of calculated reciprocity, even when controlling for age and after including a measure of verbal ability. By contrast, theory of mind abilities were unrelated to children's reciprocal behavior. This is the first systematic investigation of essential cognitive capacities for calculated reciprocity. We discuss prospection and delay of gratification as two domain-general capacities that are utilized for calculated reciprocity and which could explain developmental as well as species-differences in cooperation.

Improving prospective memory in school-aged children: Effects of future thinking and performance predictions

Recently, event-based prospective memory (PM) performance of children has been shown to benefit from different encoding strategies such as imagining the execution of a future PM task (i.e., future thinking) and making performance predictions (i.e., metacognitive monitoring). This study aimed to investigate whether and how these two encoding strategies affect PM performance alone and in combination. For this purpose, 127 children aged 8-11 years were assigned to four encoding conditions: (a) standard, (b) performance predictions, (c) future thinking, and (d) future thinking + performance predictions. The ongoing task performance costs (i.e., attentional monitoring), working memory (WM) span, and metacognitive monitoring judgments, such as task difficulty expectations, performance postdictions, confidence judgments, and strategy use, were also evaluated among participants. The results show that combining future thinking instructions with performance predictions considerably improved children's PM performance without incurring additional attentional monitoring costs. Moreover, whereas children generally tended to overestimate their PM performance, more realistic lower-performance predictions were related to higher PM scores for children in the combined condition. Finally, age, WM, and strategy use significantly predicted PM performance independent of the encoding condition. This study is the first to demonstrate that combining future thinking instructions with performance predictions enhances children's PM performance compared with each encoding strategy alone. Moreover, this work is the first to show that by simply imagining the execution of a PM task, children's prediction accuracy can be improved, which is significantly related to the PM performance advantage.

Pain in the Past and Pleasure in the Future: The Development of Past-Future Preferences for Hedonic Goods

It seems self-evident that people prefer painful experiences to be in the past and pleasurable experiences to lie in the future. Indeed, it has been claimed that, for hedonic goods, this preference is absolute (Sullivan, 2018). Yet very little is known about the extent to which people demonstrate explicit preferences regarding the temporal location of hedonic experiences, about the developmental trajectory of such preferences, and about whether such preferences are impervious to differences in the quantity of envisaged past and future pain or pleasure. We find consistent evidence that, all else being equal, adults and children aged 7 and over prefer pleasure to lie in the future and pain in the past and believe that other people will, too. They also predict that other people will be happier when pleasure is in the future rather than the past but sadder when pain is in the future rather than the past. Younger children have the same temporal preferences as adults for their own painful experiences, but they prefer their pleasure to lie in the past and do not predict that others' levels of happiness or sadness vary dependent on whether experiences lie in the past or the future. However, from the age of 7, temporal preferences were typically abandoned at the earliest opportunity when the quantity of past pain or pleasure was greater than the quantity located in the future. Past-future preferences for hedonic goods emerge early developmentally but are surprisingly flexible.

Examining the limits of Memory-Guided Planning in 3- and 4-year olds

Stored memories may be drawn upon when accomplishing goals. In two experiments, we investigated limits on the ability to use episodic memories to support planning in 3- and 4-year-old children. We designed a new memory-guided planning task that required children to both retrieve memories and apply those memories to accomplish multiple, nested goals. We manipulated the difficulty of the task by varying the number of steps required to achieve the goals, and examined the impact of this manipulation on both memory retrieval and planning. We found that, overall, 4-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds, but as task difficulty increased, all children made more errors. Analysis of these errors suggested that retrieval and planning processes might impose separate limits on memory-guided planning in early childhood, but that these limits may ease across early childhood.

Are all distances created equal? Insights from developmental psychology

Gilead et al.'s theory presupposes that traversing temporal, spatial, social, and hypothetical distances are largely interchangeable acts of mental travel that co-occur in human ontogeny. Yet, this claim is at odds with recent developmental data suggesting that children's reasoning is differentially affected by the dimension which they must traverse, and that different representational abilities underlie travel across different dimensions.

Children's future-oriented cognition

Children's future-oriented cognition has become a well-established area of research over the last decade. Future-oriented cognition encompasses a range of processes, including those involved in conceiving the future, imagining and preparing for future events, and making decisions that will affect how the future unfolds. We consider recent empirical advances in the study of such processes by outlining key findings that have yielded a clearer picture of how future thinking emerges and changes over childhood. Our interest in future thinking stems from a broader interest in temporal cognition, and we argue that a consideration of developmental changes in how children understand and represent time itself provides a valuable framework in which to study future-oriented cognition.

Optimism and Wishful Thinking: Consistency Across Populations in Children's Expectations for the Future

Two studies investigated 5- to 10-year-olds' (N = 194) positivity bias when forecasting the future. Children from two geographic locations (mostly Caucasian, higher income college town; mostly African American, lower income urban community) completed a future expectations task (FET). For multiple scenarios, children predicted whether a positive versus negative (optimism items) or a positive versus extraordinary positive (wishful thinking items) outcome would occur, including its likelihood. In both samples, optimism and wishful thinking decreased with age, optimism was higher than wishful thinking, children did not show a comparative self-optimism bias, and individual differences in the FET optimism score correlated with self-reported dispositional optimism and hope. Exploratory comparisons revealed between-sample equivalence in responses to all measures, except for less tempered wishful thinking in the urban community.

Stuck in the Present? Constraints on Children's Episodic Prospection

The examination of children's ability to simulate their future has gained increased attention, and recent discoveries highlight limitations in this ability that extend into adolescence. We propose an account for this protracted developmental trajectory, which encompasses consideration of retrieval flexibility across timescales and self-knowledge. We also identify avenues for future research.