The diachronic approach consists of considering a phenomenon as a stage in an evolutive process. The authors postulate that this approach plays a role at the level of everyday thinking in the discovery of solutions to problems. The present experiment aims at studying the relationships between levels of the diachronic approach in children and their ability to imagine solutions to a conflict between children. Sixty children aged 8 to 12 years were presented first with tasks assessing their level of diachronic tendency (propensity to evoke past or future stages of a present situation), of dissociation of two temporal sequences (absence of covariation of a cause and its delayed effect) and of dynamic synthesis (ability to describe a set of pictures representing the successive steps of an event by a single noun phrase). During a second session, the participants were presented with a drawing representing two boys fighting in the playground and they were asked to explain the reasons for the fight. Participants then had to imagine several solutions to prevent the two boys fighting. Results showed a development in the ability to imagine solutions to a conflict and a significant correlation between the levels of this development and the levels of two aspects of the diachronic approach.

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