Caza Julian S, Atance Cristina M
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Vanier Hall, Room 6006, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada.
Psychol Res. 2019 Jun;83(4):761-773. doi: 10.1007/s00426-018-1089-1. Epub 2018 Sep 5.
We explored 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds' (N = 120) "explicit" and "spontaneous" future-oriented cognition. Specifically, children had to think ahead to meet a future physiological need (desire for food) or psychological need (avoiding boredom). One group of children alternated between a room with candy and a room without candy, spending 3 min per visit. Children were explicitly asked which room they wanted to put extra candy in for a future visit to the lab (correct answer: room without candy). A second group of children underwent the same procedure but with toys as the resource instead of food (a replication of Atance et al. in J Exp Child Psychol 129:98-109, 2015). In the food condition, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds all placed candy in the correct room above chance, but only 4- and 5-year-olds were above chance in the toy condition. Overall, 4- and 5-year-olds outperformed 3-year-olds, and children performed better in the food condition than the toy condition. Children's spontaneous (or "involuntary") future thinking was assessed by coding their utterances while in the two rooms. Children who solved the explicit task uttered more task-relevant future and past statements than children who failed. Examining spontaneous talk also allowed us to explore children's spontaneous "solving" of the task before being asked an explicit test question. This research highlights the importance of varying stimuli in future thinking tasks and developing methods to capture spontaneous/involuntary future thinking in young children.
我们探究了3岁、4岁和5岁儿童（N = 120）“显性”和“自发”的面向未来的认知。具体而言，儿童必须提前思考以满足未来的生理需求（对食物的渴望）或心理需求（避免无聊）。一组儿童在一个有糖果的房间和一个没有糖果的房间之间交替，每次访问在每个房间停留3分钟。儿童被明确问到他们想把额外的糖果放在哪个房间以备将来访问实验室时使用（正确答案：没有糖果的房间）。另一组儿童经历相同的程序，但将资源换成了玩具（重复了阿唐斯等人在《实验儿童心理学杂志》129卷：98 - 109页，2015年发表的研究）。在食物条件下，3岁、4岁和5岁的儿童都将糖果放在正确房间的比例高于随机水平，但在玩具条件下只有4岁和5岁的儿童高于随机水平。总体而言，4岁和5岁的儿童表现优于3岁儿童，并且儿童在食物条件下的表现比在玩具条件下更好。通过对儿童在两个房间时的话语进行编码来评估他们自发的（或“非自愿的”）未来思维。解决了显性任务的儿童比未解决任务的儿童说出了更多与任务相关的未来和过去的陈述。对自发谈话的研究还使我们能够探究儿童在被问到显性测试问题之前对任务的自发“解决”情况。这项研究强调了在未来思维任务中改变刺激以及开发方法来捕捉幼儿自发/非自愿未来思维的重要性。
