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Verbally reported long-term memory for past events typically improves with age. However, such findings are based exclusively on studies, where children are directly asked to recall. The present study showed that when 3- (n = 113, 59 girls) and 4-year-olds (n = 113, 62 girls), predominantly White, were brought back to a distinct laboratory-setting after either 1-, 4.5-, or 13-weeks, children--regardless of age and delay--spontaneously recalled the distinct event experienced at their first visit (all Cohen's ds > 1.00). Meanwhile, the oldest children outperformed the youngest when being asked directly to retrieve the event (n[subscript p][superscript 2]>0.088). These findings suggest that spontaneous retrieval facilitated by distinct environmental cues provides a short-cut to young children's event memories.

The trip task has been used as a verbal test for examining preschool children's episodic future thinking. However, the only existing study using the trip task merely examined 3-year-olds. In order to investigate how future projections develop, we examined a total of 241 preschool children in three age groups (35-, 47-, and 55-month-olds). As expected, the results revealed a developmental progression with the older children outperforming their younger peers. The obtained results correspond to existing evidence using behavioral tasks, and thereby underscores the robustness of previous findings showing that the ability to project oneself into the future undergoes a marked development from 3 to 5 years of age. In addition, and more specifically, the results presented here when considered together with other evidence, may suggest a hitherto neglected developmental spurt from around 3.5- to 4-years of age in relation to episodic future thinking, calling for further research in this age range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]