"First, I will get the marbles." Children's foresight abilities in a modified spoon task

Abstract

Previous methodologies used to investigate future thinking (i.e., one-step “spoon test”) do not directly assess temporal reasoning. Consequently, the extent to which foresight is required to solve these tasks has been questioned. In the current study, 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds were presented with atwo-step“spoon test”: to secure a future need (e.g., play with a marble run game), childrenfirsthad to obtain a key that allowed themnextto access the marbles. By the age of 4 children selected the key; however, it is only by the age of 5 that children reasoned about the temporal sequence of future eventsandselected the key. Temporal reasoning, memory for the past events and age significantly contributed to predict children’s ability to select the correct item. These findings suggest that temporal reasoning is crucial to assess future thinking and that item-choice measures alone might not involve foresight.