Cognitive factors that impact the development of episodic future thinking

影响情景未来思维发展的认知因素

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-06446
• 负责人: Atance, Cristina
• 金额: $ 2.4万
• 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: 2015
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2015-01-01 至 2016-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=591067
• 关键词: Cognitive; factors; impact; development; episodic

Adults think about the future constantly, with these thoughts ranging from the mundane (e.g., “What will have I have for lunch today”) to the more meaningful (e.g., “What will I do once I retire?”). This ability to mentally pre-experience the future has been termed “episodic future thinking,” and can be conceived as the future-oriented complement to episodic memory or, mentally re-experiencing the past. Although children’s capacity to think about the future is argued to be fundamental to such adaptive behaviours as planning and delaying gratification, it is only recently that researchers have begun to design methods to test its development. We now know that episodic future thinking develops substantially between ages 3 and 5, but we know very little about the factors that impact it. Identifying such factors is the first major goal of my research program. Accordingly, in a first set of studies, I will explore whether children can incorporate information about intervening events and temporal contingencies into their reasoning about the future. For example, an adult may hide her favorite cookies in the closet rather than in their customary location (e.g., cupboard) because she anticipates that someone else may find them and eat them before she gets to them next. Whether young children also take into account such potential intervening events when they reason about the future is one of the specific questions that my first set of studies will address. In a second set of studies I will examine whether the cognitive mechanisms involved in mentally projecting the self into the future differ from those involved in mentally projecting another person’s future. This issue is theoretically important since, by its very nature, episodic future thinking is defined as the pre-experiencing of one’s own future. As such, we would expect differences in the way that people – including young children - make such projections for self and other. The final goal of this research program is to examine whether children’s performance on the various tasks of episodic future thinking that will be used in this proposal is related to other higher-order cognitive processes, including theory of mind (or “mental state reasoning”) and executive function (a set of cognitive abilities that allow individuals to solve problems or accomplish goals) that also develop between ages 3 and 5. The research I propose will shed light on the factors that influence the accuracy of children’s future thinking, and will thus serve to inform parents and caregivers about contexts in which children may have particular difficulty reasoning about the future. It will also help to refine theories about the defining features of episodic future thinking and will have practical relevance for optimizing future thinking across the lifespan and mitigating the tendency for people to engage in behaviour with negative future consequences (e.g., failing to save for retirement).

成年人不断思考未来，这些想法的范围从平凡的（例如，“今天午餐吃什么”）到更有意义的（例如，“退休后我会做什么？”）。在心理上预先体验未来被称为“情景未来思维”，可以被视为对情景记忆的面向未来的补充，或者在心理上重新体验过去，尽管人们认为儿童思考未来的能力是有限的。情景未来思维是计划和延迟满足等适应性行为的基础，直到最近，研究人员才开始设计测试其发展的方法。我们现在知道，情景未来思维在 3 岁至 5 岁之间显着发展，但我们对其中的因素知之甚少。因此，在第一组研究中，我将探讨儿童是否可以将有关干预事件和临时突发事件的信息纳入他们对未来的推理中。一个成年人可能将她最喜欢的饼干藏在壁橱里，而不是放在惯常的位置（例如橱柜），因为她预计其他人可能会在她下次拿到它们之前找到它们并吃掉它们。关于未来的原因是我的第一组研究将解决的具体问题之一，在第二组研究中，我将研究在心理上将自我投射到未来的认知机制是否与在心理上投射他人的认知机制不同。这个问题是未来。理论上很重要，因为从本质上讲，情景未来思维被定义为对自己未来的预先体验，因此，我们预计人们（包括幼儿）对自己和他人的预测方式会有所不同。该研究计划的最终目标是检查儿童在本提案中使用的情景未来思维的各种任务中的表现是否与其他高阶认知过程相关，包括心理理论（或“心理状态推理”）和执行功能（一组认知能力（使个人能够解决问题或实现目标）也在 3 至 5 岁之间发展。我提出的研究将揭示影响儿童未来思维准确性的因素，从而有助于父母和照顾者了解它还将有助于完善关于情景未来思维的定义特征的理论，并且对于优化整个生命周期的未来思维和减轻人们参与行为的倾向具有实际意义。对未来产生负面影响（例如，未能为退休储蓄）。