Cognitive correlates of future-orientated cognition in young Chinese children

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 to 5 years. It facilitates humans and other animals 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 to 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 were 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 4-years-old being a critical age indicated by their consistent above chance-level performance. Additionally, there were associations between some future-oriented cognition tasks, as well as with performance on executive function, though not theory of mind tasks. With a culturally diverse sample, the current study contributes to the emerging evidence on the relationship between executive function and future-oriented cognition in the preschool years.