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Updated: Mar 18, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

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Future Thinking: Children But Not Apes Consider Multiple Possibilities.

Amanda M Seed¹, Katherine L Dickerson¹

¹University of St Andrews, School of Psychology & Neuroscience, St Mary's Quad, South Street, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9JP, Scotland, UK.

Current Biology : CB

|July 13, 2016

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Human children as young as 3-4 years old can plan for uncertain futures, unlike apes. This cognitive ability allows for anticipating multiple possibilities, crucial for future planning and decision-making.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Development
Comparative Psychology
Behavioral Science

Background:

Future anticipation involves drawing on past experiences while accounting for uncertainty.
Effective future planning requires considering multiple potential outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the developmental emergence of planning for multiple future possibilities in human children.
To compare this ability in young children with that of non-human apes.

Main Methods:

The study likely involved observational or experimental tasks assessing children's and apes' ability to prepare for varied future scenarios.
Specific methodologies would detail how 'planning for multiple possibilities' was measured.

Main Results:

Evidence suggests that human children, from 3-4 years of age, demonstrate the capacity to plan for multiple future possibilities.
This sophisticated cognitive skill appears to be absent in non-human apes studied.

Conclusions:

The ability to mentally represent and plan for diverse future scenarios emerges early in human development.
This capacity for flexible future-oriented cognition may represent a key differentiator between humans and other primates.