| dc.description | Adults take for granted the understanding that a future goal can be used to guide present action. Moreover, the ability to weigh these present and future considerations is seen as a natural process in future-oriented decision-making. However, research on the development of future-oriented prudence has revealed that 3-year-olds, when faced with making a decision between a reward now and a more substantial reward later, seem to choose the lesser reward (Thompson, Barresi, & Moore, 1997). The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the development of preschool children's future self-interest in order to gauge their understanding that future concerns can guide present decisions. This was accomplished by examining how three- to five-year-olds' future self-interested behaviour relates to an understanding that past activities can influence a present state (Povinelli, Landau, & Perilloux, 1996), what role the episodic neurocognitive system may play (Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997), and by exploring novel future-oriented decision-making measures. Results indicated that children's future self-interest strengthens substantially over the preschool period. Three-year-olds demonstrate minimal future self-interest, even in choices that maximize the difference between immediate and future rewards. Around four years of age, with improvements in the understanding that the past can influence the present and developments in the episodic neurocognitive system, children begin to show more consistent future self-interested behaviour. As children approach the age of five, they seem to begin functioning from a standpoint of temporal neutrality (Nagel, 1970) such that present and future considerations can be weighed together and neither holds more importance than the other. | en_US |
