O'Brien Bronwyn, Rodriguez Michela, Gallitto Elena, Atance Cristina M
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada.
School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2024 May;241:105878. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105878. Epub 2024 Feb 13.
Adults represent the near future more concretely and vividly than the distant future, with important implications for future-oriented behavior (e.g., planning, self-control). Although children are adept at describing future events at around 5 years of age, we know little about how temporal distance (i.e., "near" vs "distant") affects their future event representations. In a series of three experiments, we sought to determine the effects of temporal distance, age, and event frequency on children's future event representations. Participants, 5- to 9-year-olds, were asked to describe frequent (e.g., snack) and infrequent (e.g., party) events, with half of children imagining that these events would happen in the near future and the other half imagining that they would happen in the distant future. We investigated the effect of temporal distance on numerous event representation indicators (e.g., clarity, details, pronouns), all theoretically grounded in previous literature. Although children perceived near events as closer in time than distant events (Experiments 2 and 2b) and temporal distance affected the clarity of event representations (Experiment 2), most indicators were not affected by temporal distance. In contrast, event frequency (examined in Experiment 1) played an important role in children's event representations, with infrequent events being described more concretely than frequent events. Results suggest that young children may begin perceiving differences in temporal distance but that this does not translate to their event representations (e.g., clarity, pronouns) until later in development. Implications for children's future thinking and future research are discussed.
与遥远的未来相比，成年人更具体、生动地代表着不久的将来，这对面向未来的行为（如规划、自我控制）具有重要意义。虽然儿童在5岁左右就善于描述未来事件，但我们对时间距离（即“近”与“远”）如何影响他们对未来事件的表征知之甚少。在一系列三个实验中，我们试图确定时间距离、年龄和事件频率对儿童未来事件表征的影响。参与者为5至9岁的儿童，他们被要求描述频繁发生的事件（如吃零食）和不频繁发生的事件（如举办派对），其中一半儿童想象这些事件会在不久的将来发生，另一半儿童想象它们会在遥远的将来发生。我们研究了时间距离对众多事件表征指标（如清晰度、细节、代词使用）的影响，所有这些指标在理论上都基于以往的文献。虽然儿童认为近期事件在时间上比远期事件更近（实验2和2b），并且时间距离影响了事件表征的清晰度（实验2），但大多数指标不受时间距离的影响。相比之下，事件频率（在实验1中研究）在儿童的事件表征中起着重要作用，不频繁发生的事件比频繁发生的事件描述得更具体。结果表明，幼儿可能开始感知时间距离的差异，但直到发育后期，这种差异才会转化为他们的事件表征（如清晰度、代词使用）。本文讨论了这些结果对儿童未来思维和未来研究的启示。
