The estimation of time: A developmental perspective.

psychologists ceased debating the subjective and objective experience of time 10 years ago due to the findings of experiments suggesting that an internal clock is devoted to the treatment of temporal information in animals as well as human adults. Nevertheless, in the face of 1- to 6-year-old children's inaccurate temporal judgements, this discussion continued in developmental psychology. In particular, a dissociation has been established between the first forms of temporal experience in infants (temporal discrimination, temporal conditioning) and the adult-like representation of time. Recent studies reveal that 3-year-olds are also able to judge precisely time, but only under particular experimental conditions (filled duration, simultaneous imitation...). Thus, 3-year-olds representation of time differs clearly from older children's notion of time. It appears that 3-year-olds possess a highly concrete sense of time that is specific to each action or experienced event.