Current projects

The development of future thinking

• Anticipating future physiological states
  
  How do children begin to anticipate how they will be feeling at some point in the future? We are currently investigating children’s predictions about future physiological states such as hunger, thirst, and cold. In one study, we show children photographs of various outdoor scenes (e.g., snow-covered trees and mountains), and ask them to pretend that they will visit these scenes. For each scene, children are asked to select an item that they think would be useful to bring along, as well as to explain their choice.
   
• Anticipating desire states
  
  We are also interested in children’s predictions about their future desires and, more specifically, the extent to which children’s predictions about a future desire are influenced by how they are currently feeling (i.e., a current desire). As adults, there are many instances in which we find it difficult to ignore how we are currently feeling to accurately reason about how we may be feeling in the future. For example, we all know that going grocery-shopping when we are hungry results in us buying much more food than we actually need! This is an instance in which our current state is clearly affecting our judgments about the future. Our goal is to uncover the extent to which young children’s reasoning may be affected by a similar process. Finally, related to this, is the extent to which young children’s own desires affect their predictions about what another person may desire.
   
• Anticipating emotional states
  
  We are also interested in young children’s ability to make predictions involving emotional states. Of special interest is the extent to which young children can tailor their behavior in anticipation of someone else’s emotional reaction. For example, if children are made aware of another person’s likes or dislikes, can children modify their behavior to either create a positive emotion in someone else or prevent a negative one from occurring? Our research in this area is still in the preliminary stages but we are finding some interesting developments in this area during the preschool years.
  
• The relation between different future-oriented processes
  

Future thinking is a complex cognitive construct that likely underlies a number of different types of behaviours. The goal of this project is to identify these various behaviours and examine the extent to which they may be related during the preschool years. We are currently testing preschool-aged children on a battery of tasks including those that measure delay of gratification, planning, anticipating future states, prospective memory, and knowledge acquisition. Preliminary results suggest that these behaviors tend to emerge in tandem during the preschool years. However, our analyses also suggest that the relation between these tasks is heavily influenced by both the child’s age and their language ability. That is, once we control for age and language ability, a number of the tasks are no longer related.

False belief understanding in preschoolers

• Explaining actions based on false beliefs
  
  As adults we recognize that we can have beliefs about the world that are false. For instance, if Anne thinks the margarine is in the fridge, but it is really in the cupboard, then she will look for it in the fridge, where she thinks it is, rather than in the cupboard where it really is. Interpreting Anne’s action in this instance poses little difficulty for adults, but it is not so simple for young children. In this case, 3-year-olds will tend to say that Anne will look for her margarine in the cupboard (despite the fact that Anne does not think that is where it is). In this instance, the child is making a prediction about someone else’s action. We’re interested in exploring how children explain an action of their own that was premised on a false belief.

• How do parents explain false beliefs to their young children?

We have recently become interested in whether parents differ in the extent to which they explain the phenomenon of false beliefs to their children. To address this issue, we have set up quasi-naturalistic scenarios in our laboratory in which parent and child experience a false belief together. We then record and code how parents explain these events to their child.

Our research is funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.