The cognitive bases of the development of past and future episodic cognition in preschoolers

- We study the development of past and future cognition in preschoolers (3-5 years).
- Predictors are: executive function, spatial working memory, temporal language.
- Executive function and future temporal language predict episodic past cognition.
- Future temporal language predicts future episodic cognition.
- Episodic past and future cognition overlap but have specific cognitive bases.

The aim of this study was to use a minimalist framework to examine the joint development of past and future episodic cognition and their underlying cognitive abilities in 3- to 5-year-old Turkish preschoolers. Participants engaged in two main tasks, a what-where-when (www) task to measure episodic memory and a future prediction task to measure episodic future thinking. Three additional tasks were used for predicting children's performance in the two main tasks: a temporal language task, an executive function task, and a spatial working memory task. Results indicated that past and future episodic tasks were significantly correlated with each other even after controlling for age. Hierarchical multiple regressions showed that, after controlling for age, the www task was predicted by executive functions, possibly supporting binding of episodic information and by linguistic abilities. The future prediction task was predicted by linguistic abilities alone, underlining the importance of language for episodic past and future thinking.