Future-Oriented Thinking: Saving, Prospective Memory, and Planning in Young Children

Saving is an important future-oriented thinking skill to acquire but little is known about how its early development relates to other future-oriented thinking abilities. The present study would have examined whether saving ability is related to prospective memory (PM) and planning, two other aspects of future-oriented thinking, during the preschool years, as little is known about the relation between saving and PM. Due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, data collection could not occur. However, approximately 80 participants would have been recruited from daycares in Moncton, New Brunswick and the surrounding area. Four- and five-year-old children would have completed a token and sticker saving task, a card-sorting and naturalistic PM task, and the Tower of Hanoi and Truck Loading planning task, as well as a vocabulary measure (abbreviated PPVT-V). Potential results are discussed regarding what may have been found should data collection have been able to occur.