{"pk":21584,"title":"Understanding Time in Children's Mind: Development of Mental Timelines on Three-dimensional Axes","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Mandarin speakers have different space-time mappings than English speakers, but how Mandarin-speaking children spatialize time is unknown. We explored the development of 3D time-space representations in Chinese children aged 3 to 5. 145 Mandarin-speaking children, divided into three conditions (Exp1: horizontal, vertical, and Exp2: sagittal axes), undertook an MTL task for ten picture stories. We analysed their choices in 3-step temporal events, intending to test their sequential and directional preference of time (e.g., order vs. disorder; left-to- right vs. right-to-left). The results showed that Chinese children acquired sequential temporal representations on the horizontal and vertical axes at age 4, similar to English-speaking children. However, their directional preferences appeared earlier than English children (Exp1). Furthermore, the sagittal axis had different patterns: sequentiality emerged only at age 5, but directional preference still has not emerged in the whole 3- 5age group.These findings emphasize that language and culture impact children's conceptualization of time.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"Psychology; Cognition of Time; Cognitive development; Language and thought; Language development"}],"section":"Papers with Poster Presentation","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9f55v30z","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Jiayu","middle_name":"","last_name":"Jiang","name_suffix":"","institution":"Syracuse University","department":""},{"first_name":"Yan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Gu","name_suffix":"","institution":"UCL","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2024-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21584/galley/11183/download/"},{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/21584/galley/21977/download/"}]}