we will prepare for each of these. The distinction between anticipation and planning is
important as one can hypothesize that a young child is able to anticipate, and think about,
the future without necessarily being able to plan for the future (e.g., anticipating going to
the park, but not knowing how to plan for this event).
To sum up, if we are interested in obtaining evidence of children’s nascent ability to
think about the future, it may be important to assess this ability in a context that: (1) does
not draw heavily on their planning skills, (2) minimizes the role of inhibitory control skills,
and (3) requires children to go beyond anticipating the steps in a well-known sequence
of events (e.g., anticipating that once the cake comes out, it is time to sing happy birthday).
The goal of the present research was to design a task fulfilling these requirements
and to use it to gather information about children’s anticipation of future states of the
self