Jiang, Jiayu; Gu, Yan; (2024) Understanding Time in Children's Mind: Development of Mental Timelines on Three-dimensional Axes. In: Proceedings of the 46th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. pp. 1793-1800).

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Abstract

Mandarin speakers have different space-time mappings than English speakers, but how Mandarin-speaking children spatialize time is unknown. We explored the development of 3D time-space representations in Chinese children aged 3 to 5. 145 Mandarin-speaking children, divided into three conditions (Exp1: horizontal, vertical, and Exp2: sagittal axes), undertook an MTL task for ten picture stories. We analysed their choices in 3-step temporal events, intending to test their sequential and directional preference of time (e.g., order vs. disorder; left-to- right vs. right-to-left). The results showed that Chinese children acquired sequential temporal representations on the horizontal and vertical axes at age 4, similar to English-speaking children. However, their directional preferences appeared earlier than English children (Exp1). Furthermore, the sagittal axis had different patterns: sequentiality emerged only at age 5, but directional preference still has not emerged in the whole 3- 5age group.These findings emphasize that language and culture impact children's conceptualization of time.

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