Learning for the future: children’s capacity to acquire information and skills in preparation for a future event

Abstract

The ability to deliberately acquire information and skills in preparation for the future is crucial for the development of expertise, allowing one to choose what to invest time in learning and to intentionally shape one’s future self. Despite considerable implications for children’s success in schooling and extracurricular endeavours, very little is known about how children develop this capacity to learn with the future in mind. The aim in this thesis was to begin bridging this gap in the literature by exploring the early development of children’s future-oriented information seeking and deliberate practice.In Chapter 2, I examined age-related differences in 4- to 7-year-olds’ capacity to spontaneously seek information beneficial to their future selves. I adapted a paradigm used in selective attention studies to measure whether children would selectively attend to information that had a future purpose over information that had no future purpose. I also measured whether children would use mnemonic strategies, such as verbal rehearsal and self-testing, to learn the relevant information in preparation for a future event. I found that 6- and 7-year-olds, but not 4- and 5-year- olds spent significantly longer attending to the information with a future purpose than irrelevant information and that the number of children using mnemonic strategies increased with age.Chapter 3 explored 4- to 7-year-olds’ understanding of deliberate practice and their capacity to engage in this in preparation for a future event. I measured whether children would use an opportunity to selectively practise a skill in one room that would later become useful in a different room. Six- and 7-year-olds demonstrated both an explicit understanding of deliberate practice and the capacity to selectively practise for the future without prompting, 5-year-olds showed an understanding of practice and some capacity to practise for the future, whereas 4-year-olds showed neither of these capacities.Chapter 4 explored the role of affective forecasting in motivating deliberate practice. Specifically, I measured the extent to which prompting 6- to 9-year-olds to consider how they would feel about achieving success in the near future would increase the time they spent practising to achieve that future success. I demonstrated that prompting children to consider their future feelings motivated 8- to 9-year-olds, but not younger children, to practise longer.In Chapter 5, I conclude with a general discussion summarising the empirical findings and discussing implications for children’s self-regulated learning and episodic future thinking, and directions for future research.