Are time and action dissociated in young children's time estimation?

Experiment 1 examined whether there is a developmental shift in children's ability to differentiate a given amount of time from a particular action. In three sessions, 3- and 5 1/2-year-olds were trained to produce an action (i.e., pressing on a squeezer) for 5 s. Twenty-four hours later, control participants were required to produce this target duration using the same action, whereas experimental participants had to do so with a new action (i.e., pressing a button). The results showed that the 5 1/2-year-olds achieved the same temporal performance in both groups. In contrast, the 3-year-olds' temporal performance was significantly better in the control group than in the experimental group. Two additional studies were run with 3-year-olds, the first designed to assess the transfer without a delay, and the second with explicit instructions to transfer duration. In each study, 3-year-olds' temporal performance was significantly better in the control group than in the experimental group. These findings as a whole suggest that 3-year-olds fail to understand that one and the same duration can be shared by several different actions. Early implicit knowledge of time was discussed.