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Thinking About the Future Because of the Past: Young Children’s Knowledge About the Causes of Worry and Preventative Decisions
Author(s) -
Lagattuta Kristin Hansen
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01079.x
Subject(s) - worry , psychology , harm , developmental psychology , suggestibility , social psychology , magical thinking , anxiety , psychiatry , medicine , alternative medicine , pathology
Two studies investigated 3‐ to 6‐year‐olds’ and adults’ ( N = 128) knowledge about emotions and behaviors caused by thinking about the future because of the past. Participants listened to stories featuring characters that experienced negative events, and then, many days later, felt worried or changed their behaviors upon seeing an entity associated with the prior harm. Results revealed a significant increase between 3 and 5 years in the frequency that participants explained characters’ reactions as caused by anticipating the reoccurrence of a negative past event. Across age, females more often marked future events as uncertain, as well as predicted that people in ambiguous risk situations would feel worried due to past‐to‐future connections.