How do children construct a concept of age?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Development
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Understanding age is complex, requiring integration of abstract concepts like time, number, and biology.
• Early childhood cognition involves developing abstract reasoning skills.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how young children (3-5 years) understand age.
• To examine the influence of size, facial/bodily cues, and numerical age on children's age judgments.
• To explore the relationship between numeracy and age understanding in early childhood.

Main Methods:

• Two preregistered experiments involving 215 children aged 3-5 years.
• Children identified which of two figures was older, with varying visual and numerical cues.
• Judgments were analyzed in relation to size differences, age cues, and numerical competence.

Main Results:

• Children often confused age with size, but this was reduced with less extreme size differences or when numerical age was provided.
• Pronounced facial and bodily age cues also diminished the age-size confusion.
• Children's age judgments correlated with their number word mastery, indicating a role for numeracy.

Conclusions:

• Young children possess a developing concept of age distinct from size.
• Age judgments are influenced by multiple cues, including visual morphology and numerical information.
• Numeracy skills appear to support the development of an adultlike understanding of age.