MTT · How does future thinking work? Uncovering its evolutionary and developmental origins

How does future thinking work? Uncovering its evolutionary and developmental origins

From early age, humans are bombarded with questions about what we want to be when we grow up, where we are going to go on our next holiday, what we are going to do next weekend or what we would like to eat tomorrow. We rapidly learn that the future matters and that our actions in the present have inevitable consequences in the future. There is no doubt that thinking and imagining the future (i.e., being able to mentally project ourselves in a future event) is an extraordinary ability that has astonishing adaptive advantages. Few would disagree that, for cognition to have evolved, it must have given organisms a readiness that affects their future. Are we humans the only animal species that can project backwards and forwards in time? Or do we share this capacity with other animals? Which factors determine successful future-oriented decisions? To fully understand future thinking as an evolved capacity, a comparative approach is needed. Only by uncovering what other species can or cannot do will we discover what is (or not) unique to humans. Recent findings show that animals possess future thinking skills. For example, great apes can choose and save a tool for future use (e.g., to obtain a reward). In a very similar situation, 5-year old children can also choose tools for future use. Can preschool children think about uncertain events (e.g., it might get cold, so I will pack a jumper), temporal sequences (e.g., I need to get the train to get to the airport to catch my flight) or more than one future event? What about other animals? The aim of my research program is to help shed light on this issue by developing non-verbal future-thinking paradigms for use with pre-school children, chimpanzees and rooks. The aims of this research project are: (1) investigate the contribution of episodic and semantic memory to future planning and (2) investigate the role of working memory in future planning. Studying closely (e.g., chimpanzees and children) and distantly related species (e.g., rooks and chimpanzees) will allow me to assess differences and similarities in future thinking across different species and also provide me with possible mechanisms (e.g., environmental factors) that might have affected the evolution of future thinking. This inter-disciplinary approach—I will combine Developmental and Comparative methodologies- will provide me with an extraordinary dataset on future thinking skills in three different species. This research will provide key information on what factors might be at play in successful future-oriented decisions. As such, this is significant for a number of applications. For example, adults who think about the future tend to be successful, save money, and make healthful choices. Similarly children who delay gratification tend to become adolescents who are trustworthy, independent, and perform well in school. Thus, my research can be used to help parents and teachers formulate ways to promote a healthy “future orientation” in children. Likewise, if people devalue the future or do not conserve enough, and underinvest in long-term resources of well-being, then public policies might be needed in order to equalize the bias. It is my view that these contributions will become significant empirical insights and will be crucial in advancing the conceptual and applied field of future thinking.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union