The Future Thinking Project

We are a team of researchers at Queen's University Belfast investigating the development of thought about time, led by Professor Teresa McCormack

We are interested in exploring how people think about time, particularly children's thinking, with the goal of understanding its effects on real-world decisions.

Professor Teresa McCormack

Principal Investigator

I am a developmental psychologist specialising in the development of temporal cognition.

I am currently working on aspects of children's future thinking with Cristina Atance (Carlton University, Ottawa), and on temporal asymmetries in children's thinking with Eugene Caruso (University of Chicago). Along with Marc Buehner (Cardiff) David Lagnado (UCL), and Christoph Hoerl (Warwick), I am also examining the effects of children's causal beliefs on their temporal judgements in a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust. I have a long-standing interest in interdisciplinary work with philosophers, and I am associated with the Consciousness and Self-Consciousness Research Centre at the University of Warwick. I am co-Director of the AHRC project 'Time: Between Metaphysics and Psychology' along with Christoph Hoerl at Warwick.

Dr. Patrick Burns

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

I’m a post-doctoral research associate working on the development of time, episodic future thinking and decision making. I’m currently employed on a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and led by Prof Teresa McCormack and Prof Cristina Atance, which examines the links between future thinking and children’s delaying of gratification. I have previously worked on aspects of children’s causal and counterfactual reasoning.

Dr. Ruth Lee

Research Fellow

I am working on the ways in which children's understanding of past, present, and future may differ from that of adults. I am currently employed on a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by Professor Christoph Hoerl (Warwick) and Professor Teresa McCormack, which investigates the relation between the psychology and the metaphysics of time. I am also interested in how children process language while it is still unfolding, and what this can tell us about children’s mental representations of the events they hear about.

Dr. Patrick O'Connor

Research Assistant

I have been involved in design, data collection and data entry on various studies within the future thinking project. My own PhD work centers on investigating whether the ability to process order within numerical and non-numerical domains is predictive of mathematical abilities across childhood. I have also been involved in a cross-cultural collaboration with Dr Carlo Tomasetto and Dr Veronica Guardabassi on a Royal Society funded project investigating gender stereotyping in early maths learning.

Contact Us

Thanks for your interest in our research. Get in touch with us for any questions or comments, or to ask about participating in studies with your child. We’d love to hear from you.

Queen's University Belfast

School of Psychology

David Keir Bldg, Malone Rd, Belfast BT9 5BN, UK

02890 974271

childresearch@qub.ac.uk