Children's Counting Strategies for Time Quantification and Integration

November 1987

Developmental Psychology 23(6):823-831

Authors:   Friedrich Wilkening   Iris Levin   Sara Druyan

Abstract

This study investigated whether and how children spontaneously employ counting to measure and integrate the duration of events. A total of 180 children, 5 to 7 years old, judged the overall duration of two successive events, which were varied in a factorial design. For half of the children, the continuous events were accompanied by rhythmic beats of a metronome. This implicit hint of a segmentation of time enhanced the use of counting, particularly in younger children. By the age of 7 years, almost all children counted spontaneously, even without the hint of the rhythm. Several sensible counting strategies were observed and were closely related to an integration rule. The normative additive rule was found to predominate in children as young as 6 years, in contrast to previous studies. These results, which evidence a surprising potential for time quantification in young children, are discussed in terms of knowledge accessibility in different contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)