The effects of cognitive and environmental factors on children’s early saving

Abstract

Saving plays an important role in children’s everyday lives. We examine the impact of a verbal prompt on children’s saving in a laboratory task and whether cognitive and environmental factors predict children’s performance on this task, as well as on parent-reported child saving behaviors. One hundred and eighty-seven 3- to 7-year-olds completed the saving task, in which they received tokens that they could spend immediately on a less preferred reward or save for a more preferred reward later. Half the children received a verbal prompt to save whereas the other half did not. Significantly more children in the prompt condition saved at least one token for their preferred reward, suggesting that highlighting saving as an option increases children’s saving. Parent-reported child saving was also significantly predicted by parent-reported inhibitory control and the saving practices parents reported with their child. We discuss implications of our findings for fostering adaptive future-oriented reasoning in childhood.