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Emergence Of Human Episodic Memory And Future Thinking, Michelle Lee

Honors Thesis Collection

Episodic memory and future thinking are crucial capacities that emerge and undergo substantial development during the preschool years. However, their relationship has rarely been examined in tandem within development. Narratives were elicited from 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children (n = 36) to assess episodic memory and future thinking. The richness of children’s memory and imagined future episodes was measured by the number of episodic details in their narratives. Non-narrative measures of episodic memory and future thinking were also administered. As hypothesized, children’s ability to recall personal events and generate possible future events underwent substantial development during the preschool years on …