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The acquisition of temporal terms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Rosemary J. Stevenson  and
Caroline Pollitt
Rosemary J. Stevenson*
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Caroline Pollitt
Affiliation:
University of Durham
*
Department of Psychology, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE, UK.
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Abstract

An experiment is described which investigates preschool children's understanding of temporal terms. Children aged 2;11 to 4;5 were required to act out situations described by sentences containing before and after. One set of sentences used both a simplified task and simplified materials. These sentences were simple commands, and they only required the children to act out the situation described by the main clause in order to demonstrate comprehension. Performance with these sentences was superior to performance with sentences like those of Clark (1971) and Grain (1982). In addition, children only used an order-of-mention strategy with the Clark sentences. With both the Clark and the Grain sentences, there were more omissions of the subordinate clause in before sentences than in after sentences. There was also a tendency, with these two types of sentence, for children to act out only the first clause in before sentences.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , October 1987 , pp. 533 - 545
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

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