Cognitive correlates of future-oriented cognition in young Chinese children

Abstract

Future-oriented cognition, which broadly encompasses an array of cognitive processes involved in understanding, constructing, imagining and planning for the future, typically develops in children aged 3–5 years. It facilitates humans in predicting and avoiding threats before they manifest and shaping current behaviours for future needs. Existing research on pre-schoolers’ future-oriented cognition predominantly tested children from Western (i.e. European, American) countries, whereas little is known about its developmental trajectory and cognitive correlates in Eastern populations. Addressing this gap, we present a systematic investigation of Chinese children’s future-oriented cognition. 87 Chinese pre-schoolers, aged 3–5 years, were administered with three comprehensive batteries of tasks measuring executive function, theory of mind and an array of paradigms tapping into different aspects of future-oriented cognition. Overall, Chinese pre-schoolers’ performance across the different cognitive domains was age-related. Importantly, there were consistencies between previous findings with Western samples and current Chinese children’s developmental trajectories of future-oriented cognition. Specifically, 3-year-olds were outperformed by 4- and 5-year-olds, with age 4 being critical as indicated by their consistent above chance-level performance. Additionally, there were positive associations between performance in future-oriented cognition tasks and executive function tasks, but not theory of mind tasks. Utilising an under-represented sample, the current study contributes to the emerging evidence on the relationship between future-oriented cognition and executive function in the preschool years.