Past and Future Episodic Thinking in Middle Childhood

Abstract

The abilities of past and future episodic thinking develop hand in hand across the preschool years and are intimately connected in adults. Little is known, however, about the development of episodic thinking in middle childhood and how it is influenced by sociocultural factors. In the present study, one hundred sixty-seven 7- to 10-year-old children from European American and Chinese cultural backgrounds were interviewed individually about temporally near and distant past and future events. The child data were further contrasted with adult data in Wang, Hou, Tang, and Wiprovnick (2011). European American children generated more specific details than did Chinese children in both past and future events. Children of the two cultures relied similarly on general knowledge in their episodic thinking, and yet, they did so to a greater extent when compared with adults. In addition, similar to adults, children exhibited consistency in episodic specificity between past- and future-event construction, and they generated more specific details in past events compared with future events and in near events compared with distant events. The findings provide important insights for the development of episodic thinking in middle childhood and beyond.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Heather Baker-Carr, Yufei Chen, Joan Chi, Hannah Swartz, Anna Yang, and Alicia Wiprovnick for their assistance. Special thanks go to the children and families who made the study possible.

Notes

¹The home visit started with tasks involving mother–child interactions, followed by an interview with the child (including the past- and future-event task and relational memory test). During the child interview, the mother completed questionnaires (including the Child Communication Survey) in a separate room.

²Among the CI children, Chinese verbal skills (M = 54.35, SD = 17.14) were not correlated with specific details (rs = −.09 to .16, ns), general details (rs = −.09 to .12, ns), or general-to-specific ratio scores (rs = −.19 to .15, ns).

³Analyses were also conducted on frequencies with event length as a covariate. The results were consistent with those from analyses of proportions.

Diana Capous is now affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara.