Promoting future-oriented thought in an academic context

Although positive effects of future thinking have been demonstrated, the effects of future thinking on children’s academic achievement are less known. We examined the effects of three forms of thinking about the future or alternative outcomes on math performance in 9- to 12-year-olds (N = 127). After a math pre-assessment, participants were asked to think about math success according to a between-subjects condition: episodic prospection (episodically simulating a personal future event), semantic prospection (thinking about the future in a non-personal, general sense), or episodic counterfactual thinking (episodically simulating an alternative past event). Results show that semantic prospection promoted gains in mean math accuracy and a greater proportion of 3rd-person visual perspective. A 3rd-person visual perspective also related to gains in mean math accuracy across conditions. Semantic prospection may be a more beneficial form of future thinking in some contexts, perhaps because it supports greater psychological distancing. Academic achievement interventions may benefit from targeting specific forms of future thinking.