Temporal Decentering and the Development of Temporal Concepts

Abstract

This article reviews some recent research on the development of temporal cognition, with reference to Weist's (1989) account of the development of temporal understanding. Weist's distinction between two levels of temporal decentering is discussed, and empirical studies that may be interpreted as measuring temporal decentering are described. We argue that if temporal decentering is defined simply in terms of the coordination of the temporal locations of three events, it may fail to fully capture the properties of mature temporal understanding. Characterizing the development of mature temporal cognition may require, in addition, distinguishing between event‐dependent and event‐independent thought about time. Experimental evidence relevant to such a distinction is described; these findings suggest that there may be important changes between 3 and 5 years in children's ability to think about points in time independently of the events that occur at those times.

The development of reasoning about the temporal and causal relations among past, present, and future events

“…TCR, however, goes beyond MTT in that, apart from merely representing the relation between a past (or future) episode and the present, it also entails representations of temporal and causal relations between other episodes-in the past or in the future-that are used to make systematic and flexible inferences about past or future happenings. TCR and temporal decentering both involve the capacity to represent and coordinate more than two points in time (see McCormack & Hoerl, 2008)-again with the difference that TCR goes beyond merely representing temporal relations between events by including reasoning about and from temporal-causal relations. Despite this massive conceptual overlap, little research so far has systematically investigated the development of these different capacities in relation to each other.…”

The development of counterfactual reasoning about doubly-determined events

“…First, Beck, Robinson, Carroll, and Apperly (2006) suggest that grasping that there is "a common past that unites counterfactual and real worlds" (Beck, 2016, p. 254) is part of understanding a fundamental feature of the world, namely that at any given point in time multiple possible events could occur. Such a claim forges a close link between this type of counterfactual reasoning and an understanding of the nature of time itself (McCormack, 2015;McCormack & Hoerl, 2008). Second, this connection between the two representations places important constraints on the construction of the counterfactual alternative: the counterfactual alternative should mirror what actually happened in the real world, only differing in terms of the impact of negating the specific event mentioned in the antecedent.…”

Historical consciousness of time and its societal uses

“…This contradicts a natural inclination to take one's own vantage point in time as the favoured position from which everything can be interpreted, understood and judged. Taking anachronism seriously requires 'temporal decentering': taking distance to one's own position in time and trying to imagine oneself in some other moment in time, which is hard to achieve (Harner, 1982;McCormack & Hoerl, 2008).…”