Goal Orientation Boosts Future Thinking in Toddlers

• In Event: 2-214 - Mechanisms Supporting the Development of Future-oriented Thinking

Integrative Statement

Introduction. At two years of age, toddlers show remarkable capacity to use goals in the service of memory and problem solving (Bauer, Schwade, Wewerka, & Delaney, 1999). Whether a goal orientation can support future-oriented thought in very young children is an open question. Young children experience substantial limitations in their capacity to envision their future (Hudson, Mayhew, & Prabhakar, 2011), but prior work in adults show that goals structure the content of episodic thought (D’Argembeau & Mathy, 2011), suggesting an avenue to support future thinking even in young children.

Hypotheses. If goals are central to organizing episodic thought, even toddlers may be expected to have greater access to memories experienced with distinct goals. We thus hypothesize that children will be more successful in imagining the future when they must rely on a past experience imbued with goal-directed behaviors.

Study Population. We tested 77 two-year-old children (mean = 29.76 months; range = 26 – 37 months; 34 females).

Methods. We developed a novel task in which toddlers learned a series of seven actions (e.g., step on the leaf path, pull the string) at the end of which they obtained two valued objects (e.g., stickers or stamps). Critically, we manipulated the extent to which toddlers were goal-oriented when they learned the actions. Those in the goal condition were told the outcome, or end goal-state, of the event (i.e., to get stickers). Those in the no-goal condition were not told this outcome but were given instead a general statement. One week later, children returned to the lab and were given a prospective memory task. At the beginning of this session, the experimenter selected an item needed to begin the action sequence and hid it as the child watched. Children were told that they must remember to take the hidden item before the event began. After a 30-minute delay, the experimenter prompted the child that the Strange Event was about to begin. The primary measure was whether children remembered to take the item from its hidden spot in preparation for the Strange Event. In this way, we tested whether their ability to perform an intended future action was based on whether their initial experience with the event was goal-oriented. If the child remembered to take the item, they received 1 point; otherwise, they received 0 points.

Results. We found that toddlers in the goal condition (M = 0.84, SD = 0.37) chose the hidden item significantly more often than children in the no-goal condition (M = 0.49, SD = 0.51), t(75) = 3.51, p < 0.001, d = 0.09. The results suggest that encoding an experience with a goal in mind allowed toddlers to access information from the experience to prepare future actions even when the future was not immediate. The data have implications for the trajectory of future-oriented thought during toddler years as well as the adaptive function of goals in early future thinking behavior.

Authors

• Janani Prabhakar, University of California, Davis and National Institute of Mental Health
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Leckey, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elliott Gray Johnson, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kelsey Davinson, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author

• Simona Ghetti, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Author