Young children’s reasoning about the order of past events☆
Section snippets
Participants
Fifty-six children took part in the study, 29 4-year-olds (M = 53 months; Range = 48–57 months; 16 boys and 13 girls) and 27 5-year-olds (M = 65 months; Range = 61–71 months; 9 boys and 18 girls). Children were recruited from nurseries and schools local to the university of the first author. They were tested individually in a quiet corner of their schools or nurseries, and each child received a sticker of his or her choice for taking part.
Materials
A purpose-built two-storey wooden dolls’ house 55 cm wide, 38 cm tall,
Participants
Twenty-eight 4-year-olds (M = 55 months; Range = 50–59 months; 12 boys and 16 girls) took part in the study, none of whom had taken part in Experiment 1. They were recruited and tested in a manner identical to that of Experiment 1.
Materials
These were the same materials as were used in Experiment 1.
Procedure
The procedure was identical to that used in Experiment 1, with a single alteration: rather than the dolls both going into the bathroom at the same time, they went in one at a time. At the appropriate point in the
Participants
Twenty-six 4-year-olds (M = 51 months, Range = 48–54 months; 13 girls and 13 boys) completed the task, none of whom had taken part in the first two experiments. They were recruited and tested in a manner identical to that of Experiment 1.
Materials
These were identical to those used in the first two experiments, except that the photographs were not used.
Procedure
The task followed the procedure used in Experiment 1, up until the point at which the bathroom door was opened after the dolls had brushed their hair. In this
Experiment 4
In our last experiment, we wished to rule out any possibility that there is something about the test procedure itself which may distract or confuse children. Perhaps asking the child the two control questions rather than acting as a cue to consider temporal order information may somehow have confused them and led to difficulties focusing on the test question. The version of the task used in Experiment 4 followed the procedure used in Experiment 1, except that we actually allowed children to see
General discussion
The findings of Experiments 1–3 are entirely consistent with those of McCormack and Hoerl, 2005, Povinelli et al., 1999, in that 4-year-olds had difficulties using information about the order in which two events had occurred to reach a conclusion about the current state of the world. This ability has been labeled temporal–causal reasoning, since it requires a grasp of the causal significance of temporal order information. Four-year-olds had difficulties even though they correctly answered
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2011, Developmental ReviewCitation Excerpt :Some research with preschoolers suggests that the ability to represent temporal sequences in this way develops between 3 and 5 years. In McCormack and Hoerl’s tasks (2005, 2007), short novel event sequences involving two events A and B occurred out of sight of the child. In these sequences, the outcome depended on the order in which A and B occurred, but children were not told until after the events had happened which event (A or B) had occurred first and which had occurred second in the sequence.
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This research was supported by an interdisciplinary grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. We are grateful to the nursery and primary schools that assisted us with the studies, and to Helena McCormack who tested the children. We also thank Fred Maddalena for constructing the materials.