Let's be spontaneous: Older, but not younger, preschoolers independently prepare for a future problem

Young children can be prompted to engage in future-oriented behaviour (e.g., bringing an item to a future event); however it is unclear when they can do so spontaneously. The shift from prompted to spontaneous future-oriented behaviour reflects children's ability to independently and adaptively use their thoughts about the future to guide their actions. We examined spontaneous future-oriented behaviour by adapting the popular "Spoon" task (Tulving, 2005) of future thinking. Four- to 9-year-olds (N = 133) were tested virtually in their homes and shown three crying babies; soothing the babies required a spoon, which the children did not have. Children were later told they would re-encounter the babies and were given the opportunity to spontaneously retrieve a spoon: our dependent variable of interest. Children who did not retrieve a spoon were given increasingly specific prompts, ending with a forced-choice selection. Fifty-three percent of children spontaneously retrieved a spoon; with age, children were more likely to be spontaneous, τ_b = 0.149, p = .038, r² = 0.054, and require less prompting, r_s(61) = 0.501, p < .001. Spontaneous performance was significantly correlated to performance on an event-based prospective memory task, r_partial(128) = 0.243, p = .005, while prompted performance was significantly correlated to performance on a working memory task, r_partial(51) = 0.375, p = .006. These findings suggest an age-related improvement in children's capacity to spontaneously prepare for the future, and that its cognitive underpinnings differ from those involved in more prompted future-oriented behaviour.