Reading fiction in early adolescence predicts the ability to imagine our own future

Episodic future thinking is the capacity to mentally simulate events that might occur in one's future. Future thinking and reading fiction, most often studied separately, both rely on the construction and simulation of hypothetical imagined events. We guided participants to simulate an average day 10 years in the future. We predicted that the ability to generate alternatives (cognitive flexibility) and the tendency to become immersed by stories (transportability) would be positively associated with future simulations. Furthermore, we expected that higher habitual reading of fiction in adolescence would be positively associated with these traits. Results showed that greater reading of fiction in middle school, especially the type of fiction that allows readers to encounter different worlds, predicted higher degrees of both cognitive flexibility and transportability in the present day, and both traits were significantly associated with higher vividness and perceived control of the future.