eCommons

 

A CULTURAL-DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVE ON TIME PREDICTION

Access Restricted

Access to this document is restricted. Some items have been embargoed at the request of the author, but will be made publicly available after the "No Access Until" date.

During the embargo period, you may request access to the item by clicking the link to the restricted file(s) and completing the request form. If we have contact information for a Cornell author, we will contact the author and request permission to provide access. If we do not have contact information for a Cornell author, or the author denies or does not respond to our inquiry, we will not be able to provide access. For more information, review our policies for restricted content.

No Access Until

2025-09-05
Permanent Link(s)

Other Titles

Author(s)

Abstract

Individuals regularly predict the duration of events and tasks in their daily lives, forming plans and allocating time for various activities. However, these predictions are often inaccurate and are susceptible to many factors. This dissertation examined time prediction patterns from a cultural and developmental perspective, which was not comprehensively investigated in the past literature. Chapter 2 considered the effects of reminders of past experiences and the introduction of social consequences on adults’ time estimates for everyday tasks in a cross-cultural context. Asian participants, unlike their European American counterparts, tended to inflate their predictions in response to these factors, as shown in Study 1. Study 2 extended these findings to European American, Asian American, and Chinese college students, with Chinese students showing the most pronounced increase in prediction times. Chapter 3 further compared individuals’ predicted and actual completion times for short tasks, using an anagram task and a visual search task. The findings reinforced that individuals generally overestimate brief task completion times. Moreover, participants consistently predicted longer completion times for subsequent trials than their actual completion times in preceding trials, indicating a pessimism bias. Interestingly, this overestimation increased in later trials, with participants neither becoming more accurate in their time predictions nor shifting from overestimation to underestimation as they gained more experience with the task. A cultural difference emerged in the first study but was not observed in the second study. Asian participants displayed a more cautious approach to time prediction in general compared to their European American counterparts. Nevertheless, the overarching patterns within each cultural group remained similar. While a considerable body of research examines time prediction behaviors in adults, there remains a conspicuous gap in the literature concerning the analogous patterns in children. The final study asked children aged 5 to 10 to predict their completion times for a visual search task. Results showed older children (7-10 years) generally overestimated time requirements, while younger children (5-6 years) didn’t show this tendency. These findings illuminate the developmental trajectory of time prediction and can inform strategies for enhancing it, while also elucidating the developmental origins of adult biases in time prediction.

Journal / Series

Volume & Issue

Description

145 pages

Sponsorship

Date Issued

2023-08

Publisher

Keywords

Child development; Culture; Planning fallacy; Time prediction

Location

Effective Date

Expiration Date

Sector

Employer

Union

Union Local

NAICS

Number of Workers

Committee Chair

Wang, Qi

Committee Co-Chair

Committee Member

Bian, Lin
Loeckenhoff, Corinna

Degree Discipline

Human Development

Degree Name

Ph. D., Human Development

Degree Level

Doctor of Philosophy

Related Version

Related DOI

Related To

Related Part

Based on Related Item

Has Other Format(s)

Part of Related Item

Related To

Related Publication(s)

Link(s) to Related Publication(s)

References

Link(s) to Reference(s)

Previously Published As

Government Document

ISBN

ISMN

ISSN

Other Identifiers

Rights

Attribution 4.0 International

Types

dissertation or thesis

Accessibility Feature

Accessibility Hazard

Accessibility Summary

Link(s) to Catalog Record