Future thinking and medicine adherence: a study of typically developing and chronically ill adolescents
type: CreativeWork
description: Future thinking is thought to play a fundamental role in guiding adaptive, futureoriented behaviour across the life span (Michaelian, Klein, & Szpunar, 2016; Schacter, Benoit, & Szpunar, 2017; Seligman, Railton, Baumeister, & Sripada, 2013; Taylor, Pham, Rivkin, & Armor, 1998), and is considered to be of profound importance during adolescence (Nurmi, 1991). With its wide-ranging influence on behaviour, future thinking has attracted attention from across psychological disciplines, with each approaching the study of future-oriented cognition from differing theoretical perspectives. Across three studies, this thesis draws together several different approaches to the study of future thinking in an effort to better understand the nature of future-oriented cognition in adolescence and the role it plays in countering myopic, short-sighted decision making during this critical period of development. Ultimately, this thesis aims to investigate whether future thinking determines treatment adherence in adolescents with chronic illness and whether living with a chronic health condition might disrupt the way in which a young person thinks or feels about the future. Chapter 1 provides an overview of our current understanding of future thinking and of the dominant perspectives that exist in the literature. Following this, Chapter 2 reviews previous research on medication adherence in the context of adolescent chronic illness and considers the potential role future thinking might play in predicting adolescents’ adherence to treatment. Then, in Chapter 3, two studies conducted with typically developing adolescents are described. Both explore how different measures of future thinking overlap in adolescence and aim to provide insight into how different aspects of future-oriented cognition relate to impulsive decision making in typically developing teens. Studies 1 and 2 reveal that there is more than one way for an adolescent to be oriented to the future and that only certain aspects o…
abstract: Future thinking is thought to play a fundamental role in guiding adaptive, futureoriented behaviour across the life span (Michaelian, Klein, & Szpunar, 2016; Schacter, Benoit, & Szpunar, 2017; Seligman, Railton, Baumeister, & Sripada, 2013; Taylor, Pham, Rivkin, & Armor, 1998), and is considered to be of profound importance during adolescence (Nurmi, 1991). With its wide-ranging influence on behaviour, future thinking has attracted attention from across psychological disciplines, with each approaching the study of future-oriented cognition from differing theoretical perspectives. Across three studies, this thesis draws together several different approaches to the study of future thinking in an effort to better understand the nature of future-oriented cognition in adolescence and the role it plays in countering myopic, short-sighted decision making during this critical period of development. Ultimately, this thesis aims to investigate whether future thinking determines treatment adherence in adolescents with chronic illness and whether living with a chronic health condition might disrupt the way in which a young person thinks or feels about the future. Chapter 1 provides an overview of our current understanding of future thinking and of the dominant perspectives that exist in the literature. Following this, Chapter 2 reviews previous research on medication adherence in the context of adolescent chronic illness and considers the potential role future thinking might play in predicting adolescents’ adherence to treatment. Then, in Chapter 3, two studies conducted with typically developing adolescents are described. Both explore how different measures of future thinking overlap in adolescence and aim to provide insight into how different aspects of future-oriented cognition relate to impulsive decision making in typically developing teens. Studies 1 and 2 reveal that there is more than one way for an adolescent to be oriented to the future and that only certain aspects o…
author: McCue, Robyn
language: eng
keywords: Future thinking, Future self-connectedness, Medicine Adherence, Episodic Future Thinking, Temporal Discounting
date published: 2020-7
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:55:18Z
provider: Queen's University Belfast
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Queen's University Belfast