Constructive episodic simulation, self-projection, and scene construction: Investigating the mechanisms of children's episodic thinking

Constructive episodic simulation, self-projection, and scene construction are three prominent cognitive mechanisms posited to underpin episodic thinking. This study investigated whether these mechanisms explain individual differences in children's episodic thinking and relations to other related abilities during middle childhood (i.e., imagination, perspective-taking, and spatial navigation). A sample of 150 Canadian children aged 8 to 10 years completed the Autobiographical Interview, in which they described future, past, current, and make-believe events, and several other behavioural tasks measuring their perspective-taking, spatial navigation, narrative ability, and receptive vocabulary. Structural equation modelling revealed significant covariance among episodic thinking for future, past, and current events, imagination, and spatial navigation, but not perspective-taking. When children's verbosity was controlled, these relations were weakened in magnitude and spatial navigation was no longer significantly related to episodic thinking processes. These results support constructive episodic simulation and scene construction accounts, as well as a more general underlying episodic simulation ability, as mechanisms for episodic thinking in middle childhood.