ABSTRACT

Children’s ability to save emerges during the preschool years, but little is known about the different forms saving takes (and whether these relate) and the mechanisms driving its development. Because research with adults suggests that different aspects of future orientation increase adults’ propensity to save, we explored whether, in a sample of 71 3- to 5-year-olds tested in a university laboratory in Ottawa, Canada, the ability to mentally pre-experience the future (or “episodic future thinking”) predicted saving in two different contexts. In the first, using a “Saving marbles” task, we assessed children’s capacity to save for a larger reward in the near future. In the second, using a newly developed “Saving candies” task, we assessed children’s capacity to save a certain amount of resource for a more remote future time point, without necessarily reaping a larger future reward. Children were also given two delay of gratification tasks to determine whether these related to saving. Performance on both saving tasks was significantly related after controlling for age in months and verbal ability (r = .25, p = .041), a finding that suggests some coherence in early saving behaviors. However, we detected no significant associations between saving and delay of gratification. A series of regression analyses showed that episodic future thinking, as measured by three different tasks, did not predict saving. Our discussion focuses on why the capacity to think about the future may not predict saving in early development, and suggests viable avenues for future research in this area.

摘要

儿童的储蓄能力在学龄前阶段就出现了，但人们对储蓄的不同形式（以及这些形式是否相关）以及驱动其发展的机制知之甚少。由于对成年人的研究表明，未来取向的不同方面会增加成年人的储蓄倾向，因此我们在加拿大渥太华的一所大学实验室测试了 71 名 3 至 5 岁儿童的样本，探讨了他们是否有能力在心理上预先做好准备。 -体验未来（或“情景未来思维”）在两种不同背景下预测的储蓄。首先，我们使用“节省弹珠”任务来评估孩子们为在不久的将来获得更大奖励而储蓄的能力。在第二个中，使用新开发的“节省糖果”任务，我们评估了孩子们为更遥远的未来时间点节省一定量资源的能力，不一定会获得更大的未来回报。孩子们还被赋予了两项延迟满足任务，以确定这些任务是否与储蓄有关。在控制年龄（以月为单位）和语言能力后，两项储蓄任务的表现显着相关（r = .25，p = .041），这一发现表明早期储蓄行为存在一定的一致性。然而，我们发现储蓄和延迟满足之间没有显着关联。一系列回归分析表明，通过三个不同任务衡量的情景未来思维并不能预测储蓄。我们的讨论重点是为什么思考未来的能力可能无法预测早期开发中的节省，并为该领域的未来研究提出了可行的途径。