In our study, we tested the emergence of future thinking abilities through children’s ability to
maintain future goals during the developmental shift between 3 and 4 years of age. Our main objectives
were to examine the effects of goal structure and the effects of task demands on children’s future
thinking. We did not specify an exact future time to ensure that young children’s performance would
not be deflated by a lack of understanding of temporal terminology because past research has indicated
that 3-year-olds have a more limited understanding of future terms, such as tomorrow and yesterday,
than 4-year-olds. Because children as young as 3 years are able to construct future narratives
using temporally nonspecific future-directed language, such as going and will, we included this type of
language to refer to the future in our instructions (Grant & Suddendorf, 2011).