Poster #1 - Children’s Temporal Knowledge: The Role of Language, Timelines, and Executive Functions

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Temporal knowledge, a fundamental ability that impacts understanding of events and memory of them, undergoes protracted development (Grant & Suddendorf, 2009). For example, older children are better at ordering past autobiographical events and using time words such as “before” and “after” than younger children (Friedman, 1992; Friedman & Lyons, 2005; Grant & Suddendorf, 2011). Pictorial timelines, however, have been shown to aid reconstruction of autobiographical memory (Gosse & Roberts, 2014). Thus, it is possible that timelines may help children remember other types of temporal information, specifically non-autobiographical. Training has been shown to be effective in other domains, such as vitalist biology, and growth in conceptual understanding is predicted by executive functions (Bascandziev, Tardiff, Zaitchik, & Carey, 2018). The purpose of our research was to investigate how children use timelines to recall the temporal ordering of recent, rather than autobiographical, events, and if executive functions and/or practice using a timeline play a role. We also measured children’s understanding of the words “before” and “after” in the context of a typical day. Given our pilot work showing that children’s temporal memory for the events in a storybook is poor, we aimed to improve recall with a timeline task. We predicted that performance on all the tasks would improve with age; of interest was identifying which factors most strongly predicted recall of temporal events - practice with a timeline, understanding “before” and “after,” and/or executive functions. Forty 3- to 6-year-old participants completed a five-part procedure. First, they performed a timeline task depicting typical day activities to assess their understanding of the words “before” and “after.” Next, participants were read a storybook. Subsequently, they ordered five pictures from the storybook into a timeline. They were then asked questions about the sequencing of events from the book. Some events related to the timeline task (rehearsed) and some did not (non-rehearsed). Lastly, they completed two executive function tasks: the Day/Night Stroop, measuring inhibition, and the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS), measuring switching. Across age, children were 57% accurate on the typical day activity, 60% accurate on answering rehearsed, non-rehearsed, and overall storybook questions, 79% accurate on Stroop, and 86% accurate on DCCS. For the timeline activity, they correctly placed a mean of 2.08 (SD = 1.49) events out of 5. Performance on the typical day activity, timeline task, accuracy on storybook questions, and performance on both executive function tasks improved with age (rs range from .38 to .58, ps < .016, Table 1). The linear combination of these variables significantly predicted overall recall of the events from the storybook (F (5, 12) = 3.95, p = .024; R2 = .62), with timeline accuracy (t = 2.62, p = .022) and DCCS (t = 2.65, p = .021) serving as the strongest predictors. In conclusion, children’s recall of the temporal ordering of non-autobiographical events is constrained by their understanding of “before” and “after” and cognitive flexibility as measured by DCCS; however, it can be facilitated by engaging in a timeline task.

Authors

• Eliana J Albright, Bowdoin College
  Presenting Author

• Martha E Arterberry, Colby College
  Non-Presenting Author