A Developmental Analysis of Early Time Concepts: The Equivalence and Additivity of the Effect of Interfering Cues on Duration Comparisons of Young Children

Abstract

Young children compare durations correctly and explain their conclusions logically only when no interfering cues such as distance and speed are introduced. We investigated whether type of cue and additivity of interfering cues affect children's duration comparisons. 4- and 5-year-old children were asked to compare the burning times of pairs of partially synchronous lights differing in intensity, bulb size, or both. Those who erred tended to attribute longer duration to the brighter or larger bulb, brightness having a stronger interfering effect than size. Since brightness might qualify as "work" more than bulb size might, the finding that the former interferes more than the latter supports Piaget's basic claim of children's confusion of time with "work." The fact that bulb size interferes at all, which does not fit into Piaget's framework, may be explained in terms of children's inability to distinguish clearly between time-related and time-unrelated cues and their assumption of direct relations between dimensions. Additivity of interference did not emerge, indicating that the previous finding which suggested its existence--distance plus speed interfering with duration comparisons more than speed alone--should be reassessed in terms of type of interfering cues, that is, distance interferes more than speed with time.

Active play and screen time in US children aged 4 to 11 years in relation to sociodemographic and weight status characteristics: a nationally representative cross-sectional analysis

“…In a recent study comparing early elementary school-aged children's responses to those of their parents, moderate agreement was found for reporting of commonly played games and activities and transportation to school [ 64 ]. Young children are generally unable to accurately report the number of minutes spent in physical activity [ 65 ], and therefore parent reports or objective observations are necessary. In NHANES, subjects age 12 years and older are asked a series of questions regarding their frequency, duration, intensity, and type of physical activity, whereas for younger children, a parent is asked to make a much cruder assessment of frequency of bouts of moderate to vigorous activity.…”

Development of concepts of interrelationships among duration, distance, and speed

“…From these ndings, it seems that the rst relational knowledge among duration, distance, and speed is ''more-ismore'' between two variables, as suggested by Levin (1982) and Acredolo et al (1984) and is rather implicit. The ''moreis-more'' representation has been observed in various other domains in young children (e.g., Levin & Gilat, 1983;Matsuda, 1989;Pufall & Shaw, 1972;Smith, Carey, & Wiser, 1985). The ''more-is-more'' relation must be often helpful to understand the world and to act in the world and often obtain positive feedback in their usual everyday life.…”

PlaceAndPlay

“…Young children are not yet used to the relationship between real-time sound and written notation, and their time concepts are not always as accurate as those of adults [13], so the concept of mapping time onto a horizontal axis may be elusive.…”