A Cognitive Study On The Temporal Cognition Of The "Near Future" In 5-to 8-Year-Olds

Temporal cognition contains such three aspects as temporal succession, temporal duration, and temporal locus. Children's temporal cognitive representations differ in different time sections, and are influenced by various factors. Although there have been many studies on children's future time cognition, few was based on the range-synthesis model. As the range-synthesis model suggests, two experiments were conducted to describe 5- to 8-year-olds' characteristics of the cognition of temporal succession and temporal duration in the time ranges of one week and one year in the future respectively, in virtue of the representative events with the unit of day or month in respective time range, with 4 factors of space, reference-point, event, and age concerned. Both experiments introduced the procedures of picture-pointing task and picture-sorting task. The results were as follows:(1) All children were able to differentiate the future duration between the referent event and the representative event in the two time ranges, and the accuracy of judgments increased with age. The judgments of 7-year-olds differed from both the 5- to 6-year-olds and the 8-year-olds.(2) Children by 5 to 7 years of age showed a trend of using a one-way linear scale to represent the spatial distance.(3) All of the 5- to 6-year-olds could not judge the future duration from the vantage of the present in both of the two time ranges, whereas children aged 8 yearscould choose the appropriate reference-point based on the task demands. Children by 7 years of age could judge from the vantage of present in the "one week in the future" task, but failed in the "one year in the future" task.(4) Most of the children showed a "polarize" tendency to underestimate the future duration of the event relatively recent, and overestimate that of the event relatively far in given time range.(5) The temporal cognition of most children was influenced in various degrees by the extent of familiarity of events used in the experiments.(6) Most of the 5- to 8-year-olds showed various degrees of confusion of the "recent past" and the "near future".(7) All children could fairly correctly sort the events in the "one week in the future" task from the vantage of "Sunday", and the performance on succession task was better than on duration task, although only 8 years olds could manage to sort these events correctly from the vantage of "present". As to the "one year in the future" task, the accuracy of judgments on both reference points was rather poor, even in 8 years olds.