4-7 Years Old Children's Acquisition Of Duration Words

It is difficult to obtain the abstract terms such as time words for children.Characterizing the initial meanings that children assign to time words may contribute both to our understanding of how time is represented in the child's mind and to our understanding of how abstract words are learned more generally.There are two ways to get time words' precise meaning.(1)Duration mapping hypothesis: meanings rooted in the perception of approximate duration(2)lexical ordering hypothesis:meanings defined by the rank ordering of time words,independent of their actual durations.On the duration mapping account,which posits that each duration word is linked to an approximate magnitude,we predicted that before learning their precise definitions,children should not only know that an hour is longer than a minute,but also approximately how much longer it is.On the lexical ordering account,children should be able to correctly compare hour vs.minute before having representations of the approximate duration represented by each word,and mappings to duration may not arise until children have learned the precise definitions of time words.The present study,we explore how children obtain the meaning of duration words,like second,minute,hour,day,week,month and year based on the hypothesizes.The goal of experiment 1 was to test children's knowledge of the rank ordering of time words by asking children from 4 years to 7 years to compare the time words.We found that by age 4,children chose the correct character more often than expected by chance.As children grew older,their performance on these items improved across the board.The goal of experiment 2 was to distinguish the two hypothesizes through combine duration words and number,each comparison was designated same(1minutes vs.1 hours),congruent(2 minutes vs.3 hours),or incongruent(3 minutes vs.2 hours).We found that even 4,5and 6 years old children – who have robust understanding of number words and counting – performed more poorly than on contrasts with incongruent cues than congruent,while the 7-year-old children's performance was consistently near ceiling and unaffected by comparison type.Experiment 3 asked children to place duration expressions onto a time line,testing duration mapping hypothesis directly.We found that by age 6,children can map duration words onto approximate durations.And definitions of time word are relative to estimate time words.These findings indicate that,despite having knowledge of the rank ordering of these terms,children have relatively little understanding of their absolute durations,support the lexical ordering hypothesis.In conclusion,old children get the meaning of duration words is a process of keeping more accurate from 4 years.The meanings of time words are instead rooted in relative orderings like other abstract words.