“What Should You Bring with You to This Place?”: Examining Children’s Episodic Foresight Using Open-Ended Questions

Abstract

Children’s episodic foresight, the ability to mentally project oneself into the future to pre-experience an event (e.g., Atance & O’Neill, 2005), begins to emerge early in the preschool years. Results from the Picture-book task (Atance & Meltzoff, 2005) have shown that children are generally capable of selecting an item needed in the future (from provided options), but young preschoolers have difficulty justifying their choice with future-oriented explanations. Because episodic foresight has typically been measured using forced-choice questions (such as the Picture-book task) less is known about children’s more naturalistic and “open-ended” future thinking (i.e., more spontaneous forms of episodic foresight). Forty-eight 3-to 5-year-olds completed a new, open-ended version of the Picture-book task. Using a descriptive approach, we found that children were able to generate an appropriate item to bring with them to a future location, and that this ability improved with age. Temporal focus as well as internal (episodic) and external (semantic) details were explored in the context of children’s explanations. Children’s explanations were mostly present-oriented and included episodic and semantic details equally. Our findings extend our knowledge of children’s episodic foresight by highlighting children’s ability to solve future-oriented problems in an open-ended manner.

Keywords:

• Future thinking
• episodic foresight
• open-ended questioning
• young children

Acknowledgements

This research was partially funded by NSERC Discovery Grants awarded to CMA and CEVM.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada;

Notes on contributors

Tessa R. Mazachowsky

Tessa R. Mazachowsky is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON, Canada, L2S 3A1. Email: [email protected]

Cristina M. Atance

Cristina M. Atance is the Director of the Childhood Cognition and Learning Laboratory and Full Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa, 136 Jean-Jacques Lussier, Ottawa, ON, Canada, K1N 6N5. Email: [email protected]

Sarah Mitchinson

Sarah Mitchinson is a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, N2L 3C5. Email: [email protected]

Caitlin E. V. Mahy

Caitlin E. V. Mahy is the Director of the Developing Memory and Cognition Lab and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Brock University, 1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way, St. Catharines, ON, Canada, L2S 4A1. Email: [email protected]