Poster #41 - The Effect of Verbal Prompts on Children's Saving Behavior in a Novel Token-Based Task

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

Integrative Statement

Saving is an important and highly adaptive behavior that allows humans to ration, set aside money, and allocate resources for the future. However, humans are not always adept at saving and thus gaining better insight about when this ability develops and the factors affecting it is needed. Although there is some evidence that saving improves between ages 3 and 5 (e.g., Atance, Metcalf, & Thiessen, 2017) and that certain manipulations (e.g., giving children a verbal prompt to save) lead to increases in saving (e.g., Atance et al., 2017; Kamawar et al., 2018), this research is limited to one single task (saving marbles) used only with preschoolers. We extended this research by (1) testing a large sample (N = 172) of 3- to 7-year-olds, (2) developing a new task requiring children to save tokens to “buy” a preferred treat; and (3) replicating previous work in which saving is significantly higher when children are “prompted” to save. In our newly-developed task, children learned that there were two treats: less-preferred raisins and more-preferred Smarties. Children were taught that one token “buys” them one treat and that they would receive five tokens total. Next, children learned that they would first have access to the raisins for a specified amount of time and only after gain access to the Smarties. The dependent variable of interest was thus how many tokens children saved for the Smarties. Importantly, we randomly assigned children to one of two conditions: “baseline” or “prompt.” In the prompt condition, children were told: “If you want to, you can use all of your tokens in the raisins game, or you can save some tokens for the Smarties game”. In contrast, in the baseline condition, there was no mention of saving. Regression analyses showed a significant main effect of condition on saving, [R2 = .025, F(1, 170) = 4.39, β = .536, t(1, 170) = 2.095, p = .038]. Moreover, chi-square analyses showed that there was a higher percentage of savers in the prompt condition (65.5%) than in the baseline condition (37.6), and a significant association between condition and saving, χ2(1) = 6.97, p = .008. Interestingly, however, subsequent regression analyses did not find an effect of age on saving, [R2 = .025, F(1, 170) = 2.195, β = .001, t(1, 170) = .158, p = .875], and the age x condition interaction was similarly non-significant, [R2 = .026, F(1, 170) = 1.524, β = .007, t(1, 170) = .450, p = .654]. The significant effect of condition is noteworthy because it replicates previous findings (e.g., Atance et al., 2017), while using a new task that is more ecologically valid and more closely resembles the kind of saving that adults typically engage in (e.g., saving money to buy a preferred resource in the future). The non-significant effect of age was somewhat surprising but suggests that demographic (e.g., family income) and environmental (e.g., talk about saving) factors may be more influential than age (and its associated cognitive abilities) in the development of saving.

Authors

• Katherine Dueck, University of Ottawa
  Presenting Author

• Eloise Aubin, Carleton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alex Castro, University of Ottawa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Emily Jerome, Carleton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deepthi Kamawar, Carleton University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marina Milyavskaya, Carleton University
  Non-Presenting Author

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