As cognitive processes implied in time estimation (e.g. Finally, as Block, Zakay and Hancock mentioned, comparing children's, adolescent's and adult's retrospective time estimates could provide the literature with an important theoretical and practical developmental knowledge about the processes involved in time estimation. Moreover, in a recent meta-analysis on the effect of the cognitive load on prospective and retrospective time estimates, none of the data which contributed to the reported effect sizes came from studies comparing both paradigms in a children sample. As a matter of fact, of all the studies involving children participants that can be found in this literature, very few have used the retrospective paradigm. This observation also applies specifically to the time estimation literature emphasizing the participation of children. These two issues will be further discussed below.Īs underlined by many authors, there is a need in the time estimation literature for studies where prospective and retrospective paradigms would be compared within the same task. in the range of minutes), intervals marked by a task having some ecological validity. Secondly, there is a lack of studies addressing the capabilities of children for estimating long intervals (i.e. First of all, there is a lack of studies comparing directly both time estimation paradigms (i.e. Even if these findings are relevant for a better understanding of the developmental trajectory for time estimation by humans, some limitations could be addressed to this portion of the timing and time perception literature. Moreover, some authors have reported that 8-year old children are prone to the same temporal illusions or effects than adults are: empty intervals are overproduced compared to filled intervals and detracting attention from time results in temporal underestimation. Indeed, some authors report that children are less sensitive at 3- than at 5-years old, and that both groups are less sensitive than children at 8. Literature on children's prospective time estimation indicates that they become more sensitive to time between 3- and 8-years old. Although researchers have been interested in understanding the paradigm differences with adult participants, very few have studied them with children samples. Generally speaking, prospective time estimates are reported to be longer and less variable than retrospective time estimates. Thus, whereas prospective timing is reported to depend mainly on the amount of attention dedicated to time -with more attention to time resulting in longer perceived duration- retrospective timing is based mostly on memory processes and the number along with complexity of events that occur during the period to be timed, with more events and higher complexity resulting in longer perceived duration. once the task is over, the key difference between these two conditions is that in the prospective paradigm, participants are aware that time is a critical component during the task, and therefore, can allow more attentional resources to time. Since time estimation is made at the same moment, i.e. However, while they execute the task, participants of the prospective condition are aware that a time judgment will be required, while participants from the retrospective group are uninformed of this additional request. In both situations, time judgments are made after the task is over.
In the former case, participants are informed in advance that they will have to judge time, while, in the latter case, they are told they will have to do so only after they have completed a task. On that regard, literature on time estimation draws a distinction between prospective and retrospective timing, ,.
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.įrom an adaptive stand point, time estimation is an important ability that individuals need to master in order to adapt to their environment. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.įunding: This research was made possible by a research grant awarded to SG by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and an SSHRC Scholarship awarded to NB. Received: NovemAccepted: FebruPublished: March 6, 2012Ĭopyright: © 2012 Bisson et al. Meck, Duke University, United States of America
Citation: Bisson N, Tobin S, Grondin S (2012) Prospective and Retrospective Time Estimates of Children: A Comparison Based on Ecological Tasks.
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