Poster #40 - Examining Children’s Episodic Foresight on the Picture-book Task Using Open-ended and Forced-choice Questions

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

Thinking about the future is an important part of a child’s daily life; children may have to imagine what to pack for a family vacation, or envision that tomorrow’s rainy day will require a raincoat. These examples describe an ability called episodic foresight (EpF) or, the capacity to mentally project oneself into the future to pre-experience an event (Atance & O’Neill, 2001). Research examining children’s EpF generally finds developmental improvements from 3 to 6 years old (e.g., Atance & Meltzoff, 2005; Suddendorf & Busby, 2005). For example, Atance and Meltzoff (2005) found that when children were asked to choose one of three items (e.g., sunglasses, seashell, soap) to bring with them to a future location (e.g., desert), 5-year-olds selected the correct item more often than 3- and 4-year-olds. Importantly, on most EpF tasks children are already provided with possible solutions to solve future problems and thus, it is unclear whether children need to project themselves into the future in order to select the appropriate item. Further, providing children with possible solutions differs from the future-oriented choices they make in daily life (where questions are often open-ended) and thus limits the ecological validity of the tasks.
Research examining children’s spontaneous planning for the future suggests children as young as 4 years old may be capable of spontaneously generating a solution to a future problem (Moffett et al., 2018). However, research has yet to explore children’s spontaneous EpF using a specific task called the Picture-book task.
The current study has two main research questions: (1) does children’s EpF improve with age, and (2) do children perform better on the Picture-book task when asked an open-ended question (where they must spontaneously generate a response), compared to a forced-choice question (where they must make a choice from provided options).
Forty-eight 3-to 5-year-olds participated in the study. Children were asked to imagine visiting four locations in the future (desert, snowy forest, road, and waterfall). For each location, children answered an open-ended question (“What should you bring to this place?”) and then provided an explanation for their choice. Next, children answered a forced-choice question (“What should you bring to this place: soap, sunglasses, or a seashell?”) and provided an explanation.
Using a 2 (response type) by 3 (age group) mixed ANOVA, results showed a main effect of age group, F (2, 45) = 30.35, p < .001, ηp2= .574, where 3-year-olds performed worse than 4-year-olds, and both groups performed worse than 5-year-olds on the Picture-Book task, ps <.001. There was also a main effect of response type, F (1, 45) = 4.36, p = .04, ηp2= .088, where children performed significantly better when making a forced-choice response compared to an open-ended response. The interaction between age and response type was not significant.
Overall, this study suggests that children are able to generate items to bring to future locations on open-ended questions, but perform better when they are given options of possible items to choose from. Further, in line with previous research, children’s EpF showed age-related improvement.

Authors

• Tessa Mazachowsky, Brock University
  Presenting Author

• Cristina M. Atance, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Mitchinson, Laurier University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Caitlin E. V. Mahy, Brock University
  Non-Presenting Author