The Development of Diachronic Thinking in Children: Children's Ideas about Changes in Drawing Skills

Abstract

Classical work on the development of time concepts has focused on children's representation of time and reasoning involved in time measures. However, little is known about children's use of time concepts in their explanations of reality. The experiment presented here is concerned with the development of children's diachronic thinking, i.e. the ability to situate an object of knowledge (event, physical object, phenomenon, etc.) within a temporal dimension and to conceive of the changes of this object with time. The experimental situation explores children's understanding and reconstruction of the changes in their drawing abilities with age. A total of 70 children aged 6 to 12 years were asked to draw a human figure and then to produce as many drawings of a human figure as necessary to show how the drawings have changed over the years. They were then asked to sernate 12 human figure drawings produced by other children. The results indicate a progressive construction of diachronic thinking with age. Although children as young as 6 years are able to reason about changes in their drawing abilities, it is only at about 10 years that their reasoning reveals explicit use of diachrony.

Temporal Cognition in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Tests of Diachronic Thinking

“…The materials used in the study were identical to those used in previous studies of diachronic thinking in typically developing children (Maurice-Naville & Montangero & Parrat-Dayan, 1992;Tryphon & Montangero, 1992; a Raw scores of 29 and 27 convert to age equivalents of 9;9 and 9;3, respectively; scores of 26 and 24 convert to age equivalents of 9;00 and 8;06 b Raw scores of 90 and 88 convert to age equivalents of 8;10 and 8;8, respectively, scores of 83 and 90 convert to age equivalents of 8;01 and 8;10 1995; Montangero et al, 1996Montangero et al, , 2000Pons & Montangero, 1999;. The procedures were also closely similar.…”

“…Up to the age of around 9;0 years, most children conceive changes over time as being mainly quantitative. However, by 11;0-12;0 years, most typically developing children understand that many entities change qualitatively over time (Maurice-Naville & Montangero, 1992;Tryphon & Montangero, 1992;Montangero, Pons & Scheidegger, 1996;Pons & Montangero, 1999).…”

Children's diachronic thinking in relation to developmental changes in their drawings of the human figure

“…Sachs & Devin, 1976;Shatz & Gelman, 1973;Wilson & Dowker, 1995) have indicated a relatively sophisticated ability in diachronic thinking, at least in the domains of early language use and arithmetic ability. Tryphon and Montangero (1992) and other recent authors have extended the investigation of diachronic thinking into the eld of children's drawings and have adopted the drawing of the human gure as the object of knowledge. The question is, how do children think about the way that human gure drawings change as the drawer's age changes?…”

“…Tryphon and Montangero conclude that younger children use size differences and number of items to indicate that their human gures have been drawn at different ages, whereas older children are more likely to use different schemas and orientations, a shift from quantitative to qualitative changes. When Tryphon and Montangero (1992) asked their children to draw a gure in the way they used to when they were younger they did not specify a particular age. It may be easier for children to focus on a particular age rather than a vague notion of 'younger'.…”

“…The 6-12-year-olds in Tryphon and Montangero's (1992) study were presented with 12 human gure drawings, in random order, produced by children aged between 3 years 6 months and 12 years. They were asked to order the gures according to the drawers' ages.…”