The development of children's understanding of cyclic aspects of time

Developmental psychological approaches to the study of time have fallen into 3 categories: studies of time perception; studies of logical, reconstructive abilities; and studies of the understanding of conventional time systems. The present work examines problems spanning the latter 2 categories--the development of children's understanding of temporal cycles and the relationship between cyclic concepts and cognitive development. 62 children, ranging in age from 4 to 10 years, were administered Piagetian tests of classification and seriation and a variety of specially designed cyclic tasks. Results show major progress in the representation of cyclic order and recurrence during the age period examined. For a variety of particular cycles, order responses were shown before continuity responses. The ability to produce a correct order is related to seriation performance but not classification performance when the variance attributable to age is partialed out. Continuity responses appear to be unrelated to performance on either of the Piagetian tasks tested when age is controlled.