A Mental Timeline for Duration From the Age of 5 Years Old

Abstract

Both time and number can be represented in spatial terms. While their representation in terms of spatial magnitude (distance or size) might be innate, their representation in terms of spatial position (left/right or up/down) is acquired. In Western culture, the mental timeline represents past/future events or short/long duration on the left/right sides of space, respectively. We conducted two developmental studies to pinpoint the age at which the mental timeline for duration begins to be acquired. Children (aged 5–6, 8, or 10 years old) and adults performed temporal bisection tasks in which relative spatial position (left/right) was manipulated by either arrow direction (Experiment 1) and/or lateralized stimulus location (Experiments 1 and 2). Results first confirmed previous findings that the symbolic representation of spatial position conveyed by arrow stimuli influences the perception of duration in older children. Both 8 and 10 year olds judged the duration of leftward arrows to be shorter than that of rightward arrows. We also showed for the first time that as long as position is manipulated in a non-symbolic way by the visual eccentricity of the stimuli, then even 5–6 year olds’ perception of duration is influenced by spatial position. These children judged the duration of left-lateralized stimuli to be shorter than that of either right-lateralized or centrally located stimuli. These data are consistent with the use of a mental timeline for stimulus duration from the age of 5 years old, with short duration being represented on the left side of space and long duration on the right. Nevertheless, the way in which left and right were manipulated determined the age at which spatial position influenced duration judgment: physical spatial location influenced duration perception from the age of 5 years old whereas arrow direction influenced it from the age of 8. This age-related dissociation may reflect distinct developmental trajectories of automatic versus voluntary spatial attentional mechanisms and, more generally highlights the importance of accounting for attentional ability when interpreting results of duration judgment tasks.

Spatial attention and representation of time intervals in childhood

“…The first, novel and interesting result is that in children from 5 to 11 years-old only the leftward shift of spatial attention induced an underestimation of time whereas a rightward shift had no effect on time. Similarly, in a previous work on children of the same age, an underestimation of time for stimuli presented on the left, but not an overestimation of stimuli presented on the right was found 24 .…”

“…Finally, a result that is worthy to discuss is that children's time interval discrimination accuracy improves with age as widely accepted in literature independent on modality 43 , on stimuli duration range or paradigms adopted 24,34,45 . However, the effects of PA is not different in the three age groups, suggesting that the specific pattern of lateralized effects of PA on time remains stable across all childhood.…”

“…Similarly, the ANOVA on the rightward aftereffect revealed a significant effect of Condition [F (1,24) = 152.810, p < 0.001, ηp 2 = 0.864] but not of Age or interaction between variables (p > 0.09 for all comparisons). The result indicates that the pointing displacement in the post-exposure condition (2.119°) is different from the pointing displacement in the pre-exposure condition (− 0.330°, see Fig.…”

“…Following data on PA effects on time in young and elderly adults, the aim of the present study is to investigate the effects of PA on time across childhood when attentional processes, spatial cognition and time processing are not yet completely developed in all their components 21,22 . Even if we have evidence that infants adapt to prisms 23 and that they represent time as a line ascending ordered from left to right 24,25 , the effects of a shift of spatial attention by PA on such representation are unknown in this population. The investigation of the functional link between spatial attentional shift and time representation in children can integrate data on attention and time in children and adults shedding light on maturational implications of such a link and, taken together with elderly persons data, of hemispherical lateralization for spatial representation of time in the lifespan.…”

Estimating Time: Comparing the Accuracy of Estimation Methods for Interval Timing

“…The STEARC effect describes a space-related representation of time and temporal magnitudes, such that before/shorter responses have a processing or response advantage when associated with the left side of space, and, vice versa, after/longer responses show the same advantages when associated with the right side of space. This spatialization of time can also be observed in children as young as five years (Coull, Johnson, & Droit-Volet, 2018). Mental timeline theories in particular suggest that time is represented as a spatial linear axis that allows absolute (i.e., how long a stimulus lasted) and relative timing (i.e., temporal order; Bonato et al, 2012;Magnani & Musetti, 2017).…”