Spatial and temporal location in child language

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between the development of spatial and temporal location. The research was based on the distinction between mono-referential and bi-referential location, where mono-referential location involves the relationship between an object/event to-be-located and a single reference object/time with intrinsic spatial/temporal properties, and bi-referential location requires a projective/sequential relationship between two referential objects/times. A sentence-picture matching task was constructed having four types of problems combining time and space with mono-/bi-referential relationships. Twelve American children were tested at each of three age levels: 2;6, 4;6, and 6;6. At 2;6, the children failed the bi-referential problems and passed the mono-referential problems. By 4;6, children showed an advantage of space over time, and in addition to the mono-referential problems, they also passed the bi-referential space problems. At 6;6, the children passed all of the problems. Changes in the spatial and temporal linguistic systems were related to cognitive development in the linguistic and non-linguistic domains.

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