Linking yesterday and tomorrow: preschoolers' ability to report temporally displaced events.
Various lines of research have recently reported links between the ability to recall past and imagine future episodes. Here I report evidence that such links exist in development. Eighty-two children were asked to report what they did yesterday and what they are going to do tomorrow. Children who could answer one were also more likely to answer the other question. Furthermore, there was an association between the quantity of responses for past and future questions. This correlation continued to be significant even when controlling for children's capacity to answer similar questions that did not have a temporal, episodic component (e.g., 'tell me all the things that you can think of that are red'). Together, these results are in line with the growing evidence for fundamental links in the neuro-cognitive resources involved in thinking about past and future events.
Suddendorf
Thomas
T
School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. t.suddendorf@psy.uq.edu.au
D001315:Australia; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*