Rattat Anne-Claire, Tartas Valérie
Sciences of Cognition, Technology and Ergonomics (SCoTE) Laboratory, Champollion National University Institute, Toulouse University, Albi, France.
Cognition, Languages, Language & Ergonomics - Work and Cognition Laboratory (CLLE-LTC), University of Toulouse 2 Jean-Jaurès, Toulouse, France.
Br J Dev Psychol. 2020 Mar;38(1):59-73. doi: 10.1111/bjdp.12306. Epub 2019 Sep 26.
The present study dealt with an aspect of temporal cognition that is rarely discussed in the literature: the ability to estimate the duration of familiar actions. In everyday life, we often have to process both very short durations (e.g., when we are driving), but we also have to deal with actions or events that last for several minutes or even hours (e.g., watching a film). The aim of our study was to examine whether young children aged six and 9 years and adults are able to estimate the time usually taken by various familiar actions to perform using a production task. More precisely, they were successively presented with photographs of familiar actions that usually take more (e.g., blown a balloon up) or less (e.g., blow a candle out) time to perform. As soon as a photograph was presented on the screen, they have to start estimating the time taken to perform the depicted action and press the space bar when they think that this time has elapsed. Results showed that the 6-year-olds failed to produce longer durations for the long action category than for the short one, unlike the older children and adults. Moreover, for the short action category, increasingly short durations were produced with age. Only the adults produced different durations for different actions belonging to the same category (i.e., short or long). These results are discussed in relation to the development of an event-based system of time that can be used to solve duration tasks. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Young children understand the relative durations of daily actions. There is not any mapping between duration words and approximate durations in young children. Young children have great difficulty in understanding that the same duration can be shared by different actions. What the present study adds? There is a clear improvement with age in the ability to produce the durations of familiar actions. Children can use the event-based system of time they develop to successfully perform duration tasks.
估计熟悉动作持续时间的能力。在日常生活中，我们经常需要处理非常短的持续时间（例如，当我们开车时），但我们也必须应对持续几分钟甚至几小时的动作或事件（例如，看电影）。我们研究的目的是通过一个产出任务来检验6岁、9岁的幼儿和成年人是否能够估计各种熟悉动作通常所需的时间。更准确地说，他们依次看到一些熟悉动作的照片，这些动作执行起来通常需要更多时间（例如，吹起一个气球）或更少时间（例如，吹灭一根蜡烛）。屏幕上一旦出现一张照片，他们就得开始估计执行所描绘动作所需的时间，并在认为该时间过去时按下空格键。结果显示，与年龄较大的儿童和成年人不同，6岁儿童在长动作类别上未能给出比短动作类别更长的持续时间。此外，对于短动作类别，随着年龄增长，给出的持续时间越来越短。只有成年人针对属于同一类别的不同动作（即短动作或长动作）给出了不同的持续时间。这些结果将结合基于事件的时间系统的发展进行讨论，该系统可用于解决持续时间任务。贡献声明关于这个主题已知的内容有哪些？幼儿理解日常动作的相对持续时间。幼儿在持续时间词汇和近似持续时间之间没有任何映射关系。幼儿在理解不同动作可以共享相同持续时间方面有很大困难。本研究增加了什么内容？在产出熟悉动作持续时间的能力方面，年龄增长有明显的提高。儿童可以使用他们发展出的基于事件的时间系统来成功完成持续时间任务。
