Ciarán Canning, Teresa McCormack, Eirinn Clifford, Ciara Donnelly, Erinn Duffy, Samuel Hickland, Agnieszka J Graham
Previous studies have failed to show an effect of episodic future thinking (EFT) on children's delay of gratification (DoG), contrasting strikingly with adult findings. Recent findings from a sample of 8-11-year-old children by Canning et al. (J. Exp. Child Psychol., 228, 2023, 105618) indicate that EFT cueing is not effective compared to a no-cue control even when it is reward related. Canning et al. suggest children's DoG performance, unlike that of adults, may be negatively affected by the cognitive load of cueing, but this leaves unexplained why EFT reward-related cueing produced significantly better performance than cueing that did not involve EFT in their study...
February 20, 2024: British Journal of Developmental Psychology