Goulding Brandon W, Stonehouse Emily Elizabeth, Friedman Ori
University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, MB, R3B 2E9, Canada.
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2025 Feb 14. doi: 10.3758/s13423-025-02659-9.
The current locations of objects are informative about the temporal order of past events. For example, by simply examining the locations of objects underground, geologists and historians can determine their relative ages. In three experiments, we explored the development of this ability to infer time from structure in children 3-6-years of age (N = 317). In all experiments, children saw pictures of object arrays (e.g., a stack of blocks) and selected the item placed first or last. Children in the final experiment also made judgments about the future (e.g., "Which block will they pick up first?"). By age 5, children were mostly accurate at inferring the order of past events. Children were more accurate when inferring first than last, and when inferring the future than the past. The findings suggest that children infer history by simulating how past events unfolded, and that 3-4-year-olds may struggle to perform these simulations.
物体当前的位置能提供有关过去事件时间顺序的信息。例如，地质学家和历史学家只需通过检查地下物体的位置，就能确定它们的相对年代。在三项实验中，我们探究了3至6岁儿童（N = 317）从结构中推断时间这一能力的发展情况。在所有实验中，儿童观看物体阵列的图片（例如一堆积木），并选择最先放置或最后放置的物品。最后一项实验中的儿童还对未来进行了判断（例如，“他们会先拿起哪块积木？”）。到5岁时，儿童在推断过去事件的顺序方面大多较为准确。儿童在推断最先发生的事件时比推断最后发生的事件时更准确，在推断未来事件时比推断过去事件时更准确。研究结果表明，儿童通过模拟过去事件的展开方式来推断历史，并且3至4岁的儿童可能难以进行这些模拟。
