Linear time perception in young children

The perception of temporal events on a unidirectional line represents a cognitive ability previously thought to develop between ages five and nine. However, prior studies employed tasks requiring memory and attention skills, which may confound task performance. We assessed linear time perception in 65 children aged 3 to 6 years using a game-like task with spatial representation and verbal measures. While we hypothesized that age, script exposure, and temporal-terms vocabulary would predict performance, only age emerged as a significant predictor. Contrary to previous findings, preschoolers already demonstrated unexpectedly high performance. Despite participants' exposure to right-to-left or two writing systems (right-to-left and left-to-right), the directionality of spatial representations showed no correlation with language directionality, with most children organizing time from left-to-right. This suggests a potentially innate predisposition toward left-to-right temporal directionality, challenging assumptions about the role of cultural influences in linear time perception.