Young Children’s Capacity to Imagine and Prepare for Alternative Future Possibilities

• In Event: 1-088 - Children’s Early Ability to Reason in the Face of Uncertainty

Integrative Statement

A large body of research demonstrates that children begin to imagine and prepare for specific future events during the preschool years (Atance, 2015; Hudson, Mayhew, & Prabhakar, 2011; McCormack & Atance, 2011; Suddendorf & Redshaw, 2013). Most studies, however, have employed tasks assessing children’s capacity to anticipate future events with only one plausible outcome. These tasks therefore fail to capture the inherent uncertainty that is characteristic of adult conceptions of the future (Seed & Dickerson, 2016).

Using a novel minimalist paradigm, we systematically examine when children are able to imagine and prepare for alternative future possibilities. In the first study, 2- to 4-year-olds (N = 90) were introduced to an inverted, Y-shaped ‘forked tube’ with one opening at the top and two exits at the bottom. The experimenter dropped a desirable item into the top of the tube and children were given the opportunity to catch the item as it exited from either side in a pseudorandom order. The 2-year-olds typically covered only one exit as they prepared to catch the item, thus missing it on approximately half of the trials. Many 3-year-olds and most 4-year-olds, however, spontaneously and consistently covered both exits (with one hand each), thus ensuring they would always catch the item. The linear age effect was significant, χ2 (1) = 25.74, p < .001. This pattern of results indicates that children become able to imagine and prepare for alternative future possibilities much earlier than previous work (e.g., Beck et al., 2006) has suggested.

In the second study, 2- to 4-year-olds (N = 36) were introduced to a new ‘social tube’ task, where the uncertain future event was visibly controlled by a social agent rather than by a physical mechanism hidden within the tube. As in the previous study, children’s performance significantly improved with age, χ2 (1) = 7.74, p = .005, with many 4-year-olds spontaneously and consistently preparing for both possible future actions of the agent.

In the third study, a sample of 2.5-year-olds (N = 32) completed both the original forked tube task and a new ‘double tube’ task (see Figure 2), which examined their capacity to imagine and prepare for two certain future outcomes. Even though the optimal preparatory response was exactly the same in both tasks, children were significantly more likely to show this action in the double tube task than the forked tube task, χ2 (1) = 9.31, p = .002 (see Figure 3). This suggests that young children struggle on the forked tube task because of the uncertainty of the future outcome, and not because of difficulties in coordinating their hands.

In the fourth study, 3- to 6-year-olds (N = 193) from three diverse cultures—one Western and two non-Western—completed the original forked tube task. Some 3-year-olds from all cultures consistently covered both tube exits, and a majority of the oldest children from each culture passed every trial. The basic capacity to imagine and prepare for alternative future possibilities may therefore universally emerge in early childhood.

Authors

• Jonathan Redshaw, University of Queensland
  Presenting Author

• Thomas Suddendorf, University of Queensland
  Non-Presenting Author