Alerting attention and time perception in children

This experiment investigated the effect of a signal (i.e., a click) warning of the arrival of a stimulus to be timed on temporal discrimination in children aged 3, 5, and 8 years (N=86), using a bisection task with visual stimuli ranging from 0.5 to 2s or 1 to 4s. In all groups, the psychophysical functions were orderly with the proportion of long responses increasing with the stimulus duration, although the steepness of functions increased with age. Stimulus durations were judged to be longer with than without the click in all age groups. With the click, time sensitivity also improved and more particularly in the younger children. The statistical results suggest, within the framework of the scalar timing theory, that the click reduces the closing latency of the switch that connects the pacemaker to the accumulator in the internal clock and also reduces its trial-by-trial variability.