2007 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
The development and function of temporally extended self in early chidhood
| Project/Area Number |
17530477
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
Educational psychology
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| Research Institution | Kobe University |
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Principal Investigator |
KINOAHITA Takashi Kobe University, Graduate School of Human Development and Environment, Associate Professor (10221920)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2005 – 2007
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| Keywords | early childhood / temporally extended self / mental time travel / episodic future thinking |
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| Research Abstract |
The purpose of this study was to investigate the developmental process of young children's "temporally extended self", through mental time travel that comprises the mental reconstruction of personal events from the past and the mental construction of possible events in the future. Focusing on young children's mental time travel to the future events in particular, we conducted two experiments and a interview research.
1. Study 1 examined young children's ability to anticipate future states of the self. Three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds were presented with stories and pictures describing trip to sea in the summer or mountain in the winter (trip task). They were asked to imagine themselves to go either of the trips, and choose one item that they would certainly need and the other one that they might need from a set of items. Three-year-olds tended to choose the distractor items that were semantically associated with the scene. On the other hand, 4-, and 5-year-olds could imagine the future events and project themselves into the future.
2. Study 2 examined young children's ability to evaluate the order of necessity which they would need some items in the modified trip task. Four-year-olds weren't able to choose items considering how likely it was that an event would happen, but 5-year-olds could. And it was found that such episodic future thinking was significantly related with the seriation ability assessed with "circle serial arrangement task".
3. Study3 found that children, who could project themselves to the future, were likely to worry about the future event (e. g. camping with the kindergarteners).
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