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: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=644253
• 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).

成年人不断考虑未来，这些想法从平凡（例如，“我今天的午餐会吃什么”）到更有意义的（例如，一旦退休后我会怎么做？”）。这种在精神上的体验能力的能力被称为“情节的未来思维”，可以被认为是对情节记忆的未来互补的补充，或者在精神上重新体验了过去。尽管儿童思考未来的能力被认为是计划和延迟满足等适应性行为的基础，但直到最近，研究人员才开始设计方法来测试其发展。我们现在知道，在3至5岁之间，情节的未来思维基本发展，但我们对影响它的因素知之甚少。确定这些因素是我的研究计划的第一个主要目标。因此，在第一组研究中，我将探讨孩子是否可以将有关中间事件和时间意外事件的信息纳入他们对未来的推理。例如，成年人可能会将自己喜欢的饼干隐藏在壁橱中，而不是在习惯位置（例如橱柜），因为她预计别人可能会找到它们并在接下来到达他们之前吃它们。当幼儿推荐未来时，他们是否还考虑了这种潜在的中间事件，这是我第一组研究将解决的具体问题之一。在第二组研究中，我将研究在精神上将自我投射到未来的认知机制是否与涉及在精神上投射他人未来的认知机制不同。从理论上讲，这个问题很重要，因为从本质上讲，情节的未来思维被定义为对自己未来的预先经验。因此，我们期望在包括幼儿在内的人们对自我和他人进行这样的预测的方式差异。该研究计划的最终目标是检查儿童在本提案中将使用的各种情节未来思维任务的表现是否与其他高阶认知过程有关，包括心理理论（或“精神状态推理”）以及执行功能（一组认知能力，允许个人解决问题或完成目标），这些问题也会在3至5岁之间发展。我提出的研究将阐明影响儿童未来思维准确性的因素，因此为了告知父母和看护者有关孩子可能对未来推理的环境。它还将有助于完善有关情节未来思维的定义特征的理论，并将具有实际意义，以优化整个生命周期的未来思维，并减轻人们从事负面影响的行为的趋势（例如，未能节省退休金） 。