Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923 ANNALS OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Issue: The Year in Cognitive Neuroscience The development of mental scenario building and episodic foresight Thomas Suddendorf and Jonathan Redshaw Early Cognitive Development Centre, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Australia Address for correspondence: Thomas Suddendorf, Early Cognitive Development Centre, School of Psychology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia. t.suddendorf@psy.uq.edu.au Episodic foresight is the future-directed counterpart of episodic memory. It is a sophisticated, potentially uniquely human capacity, with tremendous adaptive consequences. Here we review what is currently known about its devel- opment through early childhood. We tackle this from two distinct perspectives. First, we present the first systematic evaluation of the development of purported components of mental scenario building as highlighted by a theater metaphor: the stage, the playwright, the set, the actors, the director, the executive producer, and the broadcaster. We find that, although there are diverse developmental trajectories, by 4 years of age children have acquired the basic cognitive components required to mentally construct specific future events. Second, we examine recent attempts to test children’s episodic foresight more directly and find that results are in line with those examining the development of required components. This is not to say that children younger than four have no inkling of upcoming events or that older children have nothing left to learn about constructing the future. Episodic foresight, and its neurocognitive foundations, continues to develop throughout childhood. Keywords: mental time travel; planning; scene construction; preparation; prudence; prospective memory Introduction The idea of a central Cartesian theater in the brain has been rightly criticized. 1 Yet, the wholesale re- jection of this idea should not obscure the fact that humans can envisage scenarios in their minds, how- ever those may be instantiated in the brain. We can build mental scenarios, communicate them, and act them out. Over the last half-dozen years, cognitive and neuroscientific studies have (finally) begun to pay special attention to our capacity to imagine fu- ture situations, 2–4 which has arguably given humans crucial adaptive advantages over other animals. 5,6 As adults, this faculty allows us to act with foresight, to prudently prepare for threats and opportunities, to hatch complex plans, and to design much of our world aiming at what we think we would like. For most problems, we can generate multiple scenar- ios of potential solutions, evaluate them for likeli- hood and desirability, and decide to pursue one of these options with an apparent sense of free will. Young children require adults to structure and sup- port their future-oriented behavior. 7 Here we review the growing literature on the development of their ability to imagine and shape the future in their own right. Like other subdisciplines in the behavioral and cognitive sciences, developmental psychology has long overlooked foresight in favor of research on memory. 8–11 Yet, from an evolutionary perspective cognitions about the present and the future are much more important than representations of the past per se. Natural selection can only work on how a cognitive capacity affects an organism’s present and future survival or reproductive chances. 12 It has even been suggested that episodic memory evolved as an adaptive design feature of the capacity for episodic foresight, 13 a proposal supported by neu- roscientific evidence suggesting that both capacities activate similar brain regions 14–18 and impair- ment in one is associated with impairment in the other. 19–22 In many contexts the past is the best predictor for the future. Therefore, memory of a past event can offer useful guidance as to what to doi: 10.1111/nyas.12189 135 Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 1296 (2013) 135–153 C  2013 New York Academy of Sciences.