Using the above keywords, two researchers retrieved 69,816 articles from the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases. To ensure the scientific validity and high relevance of the included studies to the research theme, the researchers formulated inclusion and exclusion criteria for systematic screening.

Only journal articles were included in this review. Reviews, conference abstracts, dissertations, and book chapters were excluded to ensure all analyses were based on peer-reviewed original studies. To keep the review timely, the search focused on studies published between 2015 and 2025. Only English-language publications were included, reflecting the research team's language proficiency and English's role as the main medium for international academic exchange in this field. This decision ensured a clear understanding of the literature. The review focused on education, psychology, and cognitive science to identify studies most relevant to young children's temporal cognition, while excluding less relevant areas.

After applying these criteria and removing duplicate records, 2,114 articles proceeded to the title and abstract screening stage. Two reviewers independently screened the titles and abstracts using the defined inclusion and exclusion criteria. They discussed and resolved any differences through consensus. If agreement could not be reached, a third independent reviewer helped make the final decision. After this process, 30 articles were identified as meeting the inclusion criteria and advanced to the full-text review stage.

We re-examined articles with controversial content to determine if they met the criteria. At this stage, the full texts of the studies were carefully read. Only articles meeting the following criteria were selected for further research: (1) The research theme directly focuses on core aspects of temporal cognition, such as temporal perception, temporal estimation, temporal memory, or temporal judgment. It provides at least relevant analysis, qualitative evidence, etc., rather than merely mentioning without empirical data support. (2) The research subjects are all typically developing children aged 3-10 years. (3) The research type is quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method empirical research, rather than literature without original data, insufficient sample size (n < 20), or with obvious design bias (e.g., uncontrolled extraneous variables).

To ensure the methodological quality of the selected studies and reduce potential bias, this review uses MMAT 2018 (≥ 4/5 = high quality), with independent ratings by two reviewers, and resolves disagreements through consensus. Two reviewers independently evaluated each study in strict accordance with the MMAT guidelines. The assessment followed three main steps: first, the screening questions were applied to clarify the research questions and to examine the relevance of the collected data, ensuring that each study directly addressed issues related to temporal cognition; second, the methodological rigor of the studies was assessed, including the representativeness of the samples and the reliability and validity of the measurement instruments; third, the appropriateness of the statistical methods in relation to the research design was examined to ensure the soundness of the data analysis. Any disagreements between the two reviewers were resolved through discussion and consensus, and when necessary, a third reviewer was consulted to make the final decision.

Based on this procedure, 16 studies met the MMAT criteria for high methodological quality (score ≥ 4/5), showed no substantial risk of bias, and were therefore included in the final systematic review.

A systematic analysis was conducted on 16 studies. Two researchers independently extracted data (Cohen’s kappa = 0.91) and screened the literature (kappa = 0.87); disagreements were resolved by a third researcher. Data accuracy was verified via cross-checking. Data extraction followed the standard procedures of the Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group, covering content aligned with the dimensions of the "Description of Reviewed Studies" table: first, basic research information such as author, publication year, sample size, age distribution, gender ratio (if reported), and research country; second, research method details including research design, experimental tasks, measurement tools, stimulus parameters, and analytical approaches; third, core research elements such as research purpose, key independent variables, and time-related dependent variables; fourth, research results including key statistics, effect sizes, core conclusions, and the direction and intensity of variable effects.

Research r esults

Basic c haracteristics of i ncluded s tudies

The literature screening strictly followed the PRISMA process: after initially identifying 2,114 studies, 30 articles entered the subsequent full-text intensive review stage after title and abstract review. Finally, after full-text intensive reading, 16 studies fully met the preset inclusion criteria. These studies include: Hallez et al. (2019), Hallez (2020), Tillman & Barner (2015), Hallez & Droit-Volet (2017), Droit-Volet (2017), Arterberry & Albright (2020), Droit-Volet & Coull (2015), Mioni et al. (2018), Qu et al. (2021), Martinelli & Droit-Volet (2023), Hallez & Droit-Volet (2018), Stojić et al. (2023), Segretin et al. (2024), Sener & Starr (2025), Autry et al. (2020), DeNigris & Brooks (2018), etc.

All studies were published in English, with research regions mainly concentrated in European and American countries, and some studies from China. The research samples range in age from 3 to 10 years, with sample sizes of 30 to 249, all of which are typically developing children without special groups. These studies were published between 2015 and 2025, focusing explicitly on the following aspects:

1. Core cognitive mechanisms of children's temporal cognitive development, including the regulatory role of executive function (inhibitory control, cognitive switching), developmental characteristics of the internal clock system (pacemaker frequency, switch regulation efficiency), and formation mechanisms and stage characteristics of the mental timeline;

2. Modulatory effects of emotions, situations, and individual differences, including the dynamic impact of emotion type and presentation order, the interference effect of others' physical states, the role of spatial cues, digital cues, and interfering stimuli on temporal judgment, as well as gender differences, the interaction between socioeconomic status (SES) and temperament, and the influence of cultural situational factors such as early literacy skills;

3. Development and transformation of representational styles, including the formation stage of the "mental timeline", the developmental trajectory of understanding the relative order and absolute duration of temporal words, age characteristics of nonverbal gesture expression (direction proportion, amplitude), cognitive development of the association between time, speed, and space, and the shaping of temporal cognitive representation by language ability.

Regarding the age of research samples, five studies focused on young children aged 3 to 5 years, mainly investigating the relationship between early temporal perception and attention/inhibitory ability, the influence of emotions, others' states, and event density, the interaction between temperament, SES, and early literacy skills, as well as the understanding of simple temporal words and nonverbal gesture expression; 5 studies covered children aged 5 to 7 years, focusing on analyzing the mechanism of executive function and temporal cognition, the linear development of the mental timeline, and temporal memory mechanisms; 4 studies extended to children aged 6-10 years, exploring the formation of the "mental timeline", the association between spatial/digital cues and temporal judgment, the age interaction between language ability and temporal cognition, as well as general temporal knowledge and calendar flexibility, with some studies including adult samples for comparative analysis.

In terms of research design, all 16 studies are experimental; task types include temporal bisection task, temporal reproduction task, mental timeline task, tapping frequency task, event temporal order memory task, video duration comparison task, analog scale judgment task, temporal marking and month order task, etc., with measurement content involving multiple dimensions such as temporal perception, temporal memory, temporal estimation and order judgment, reaction time, and gesture direction and amplitude.

Development and nfluencing f actors of c hildren's t emporal c ognition

Core c ognitive m echanisms of c hildren's t emporal c ognitive d evelopment

The maturation of children's temporal cognition is not the development of a single cognitive ability, but rather the coordinated development of the brain's executive function and internal clock system. Executive function actively processes temporal information by coordinating the allocation of cognitive resources, while the internal clock system, as its physiological basis, determines the accuracy and stability of temporal perception. Together, these systems promote the transformation of children's temporal cognition from "passive dependence on external stimuli" to "active integration of objective temporal information".

Regulatory r ole of e xecutive f unction

Executive function, mainly inhibitory control and cognitive switching, is a key predictive variable affecting the accuracy of temporal cognition, with inhibitory control and cognitive switching influencing the processes of temporal perception and temporal memory, respectively.

Inhibitory control is the ability to resist interference and inhibit impulsive responses. It is mainly responsible for temporal perception, i.e., judging how much time has passed in the present. Hallez's study clearly revealed the core role of inhibitory control in temporal perception. In this study, researchers used a complex pattern of non-temporal distractors to distract children's attention. The results showed that 5-8-year-old children underestimated time, a phenomenon called the "time contraction" effect, and that this effect weakened with age. The study showed that not all cognitive abilities affect the time contraction effect; only inhibitory control ability is the fundamental reason for the performance differences among children of different ages. In addition, the study found that working memory and selective attention had no significant predictive effects on the time contraction effect (ps > 0.15), further highlighting the specificity of inhibitory control. This proves that the quality of attention control is more important than the amount of attention resources. This view supports the "dual classification of attention interference" perspective, i.e., the attention control level, as represented by inhibitory control, rather than attention resource capacity, is a more core factor in the development of children's temporal perception.

Cognitive switching is the ability to switch between tasks or thinking modes flexibly. It is mainly responsible for temporal memory, i.e., remembering and judging the sequence of events. Arterberry and Albright's study highlighted the importance of cognitive switching in temporal memory. In this study, researchers asked young children to recall the sequence of events in a story. To sort them correctly, young children needed to flexibly switch between thinking about different events in the brain. The study found that, after controlling for age, only cognitive switching ability significantly predicted the performance of 3- to 6-year-old children in the story temporal order task. In contrast, inhibitory control and temporal language understanding did not. This shows the unique role of cognitive switching in temporal memory, indicating that the memory and judgment of event sequences depend more on this flexible, general thinking ability than on time-specific abilities.

Developmental c haracteristics of the i nternal c lock s ystem

The internal clock system is a hypothetical cognitive-biological model based on neurophysiological structures that explains humans' ability to perceive, estimate, and judge short time intervals (e.g., milliseconds to minutes). The core function of this system is to generate subjective temporal experience by producing, accumulating, and interpreting neural pulse signals. It is not a specific organ but a distributed network spanning multiple brain regions. Its classic model includes three core components: a pacemaker, an attention switch, and an accumulator.

The physiological maturation of the internal clock system underlies the development of temporal cognition, and its core changes are reflected in increased pacemaker frequency and enhanced switch regulation efficiency. Droit-Volet's study provided direct evidence for the hypothesis that children's internal clock is slower. Researchers used auditory clicks of different frequencies (8Hz and 20Hz) to externally "drive" the internal clocks of children and adults. The results showed that 5-year-old children perceived time as prolonged during slow clicks (8Hz). However, this effect weakened or even reversed under fast clicks (20Hz). Adults showed a more substantial impact under fast clicks (20Hz). This indicates that the children's internal clock itself has a slow rhythm. Slow clicks match its own slow rhythm, so it can effectively "synchronize", accumulate many pulses, and make time feel long. Fast clicks exceed the synchronization capacity of children's internal clocks, leading to desynchronization, reduced pulse-accumulation efficiency, and, in turn, making time feel short again. Adults' internal clocks have a fast rhythm so that they can keep up with faster clicks. The study also found that children with better attention and working memory showed a weaker effect. This indicates that higher cognitive abilities can, in turn, regulate and optimize the operation of this physiological clock, and this regulatory ability also increases with age.

Modulatory e ffects of e motions, s ituations, and i ndividual d ifferences

Temporal cognition does not exist in isolation; it is profoundly influenced by emotional states, task situations, the individual's environment, and their own traits. These factors indirectly change temporal judgment results by regulating the allocation of attention resources or the efficiency of the internal clock.

Dynamic i nfluence of e motions and s ituations: e motional p ositioning and a ttention c apture

The influence of positive and negative emotions on temporal perception is well known, but Qu et al.'s study introduced the nuanced variable of emotional positioning, revealing its dynamic nature.

In this study, 3-5-year-old children were shown two faces (angry and neutral), with the order of presentation varied to assess their perception of time duration. The researchers found that when the emotional stimulus appeared at the end (neutral-to-angry sequence), children's judgment of this time length was more accurate; when it was presented at the beginning (angry-to-neutral sequence), the judgment was inaccurate. The study found that the later emotional stimulus captured immediate attention, thereby promoting accurate timing during that period; the earlier emotional stimulus may dissipate early attention resources, thereby affecting the timing of subsequent neutral stimuli. This indicates that the influence of emotions on temporal perception is dynamic, depending not only on whether the emotion is positive or negative, but also on its position in the temporal sequence. This regulatory pattern tends to stabilize with age.

Interaction b etween s ocioeconomic s tatus and t emperament

Socioeconomic status and temperament affect temporal cognition through the "environment-individual trait" interaction, among which effortful control in temperament is a more direct and key factor. Segretin et al.'s study expanded the research dimension of temporal cognition by examining the interaction between socioeconomic status and individual temperament. The results showed that 4-year-old children from families with poor economic conditions were more accurate in judging longer durations. However, when researchers considered each child's temperament and gender, the direct effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on temporal cognition was no longer significant after controlling for these factors, and SES influence was observed only in the 4s duration task. This means that the initial finding that children from low-income families had a better sense of time was not directly caused by economic conditions. Finally, the study concluded that effortful control, a component of children's temperament, is a more direct and key factor. In addition, the study also found that female children were significantly better than male children in temporal reproduction accuracy (p<0.05), suggesting that gender may also regulate young children's temporal cognitive performance.

This result indicates that during early childhood, individual differences in temporal cognitive abilities are more strongly determined by children's innate or early-cultivated temperament than by broad environmental factors. Environment and traits jointly affect young children's temporal cognition, but individual characteristics have a more direct impact.

Development and t ransformation of r epresentational s tyles

With the maturation of cognitive abilities, children's mental representation of time also undergoes a qualitative leap—from relying on specific external events and internal emotions to understanding and constructing pure, abstract temporal concepts; from being completely dominated by subjective feelings to integrating objective facts for logical judgment.

Martinelli and Droit-Volet's study brilliantly captured this transformation. They found that older children began to establish a connection between the speed of time passage and objective duration. In comparison, younger children were mainly driven by subjective emotional experience and had not integrated objective temporal information. The happier they played, the more they felt time "flew by", and they could not consider objective duration. However, by 8-9 years old, children had been able to integrate objective duration into their judgments and to understand that the longer the duration, the slower the perceived passage of time. This transformation is a key milestone in the development of children's temporal cognition: children transition from subjective judgment based on intuitive, concrete experience to the ability to think about and process abstract concepts. This is consistent with Piaget's cognitive development theory, which describes the transition from the preoperational to the concrete operational stage.

Stojić et al.'s study further revealed a fundamental transformation in children's intrinsic strategies for estimating time duration. They found a fundamental shift in children's time estimation strategies. 4-5-year-old children infer time based on the number and density of events—i.e., the more things happen and the richer the experience, the longer the time. Young children's time estimation is often closely linked to the number and density of events. 9-10-year-old children, on the other hand, learn to sample the pure flow of time and continuously estimate whether time is up. "I recalled several times and found that the process had not ended yet, so it must be long." This indicates that children at this stage have initially been able to separate time from events for independent thinking.

More notably, this transformation in duration estimation strategies occurs synchronously with changes in children's gesture use. Children aged 4-5 years have not yet formed a stable horizontal mental timeline; their time cognition relies on specific events, and their gesture directions are relatively chaotic. School-age children have developed the abstract concept of time as a left-to-right line and use horizontal gestures as their primary means of expression. It is worth noting that gesture amplitude did not differ significantly between age groups (F=0.828, p=0.439), indicating that directionality is more developmentally sensitive than amplitude. This suggests that knowledge and skills learned through formal education and cultural practices (such as left-to-right reading and writing) help school-age children and adults gradually represent time mentally as a horizontal timeline. This view is directly supported by Autry et al.'s study, which found that children's early literacy skills, rather than age itself, are a significant predictor of their tendency to form a left-to-right mental timeline. This indicates that the development of temporal cognition is not purely a matter of physiological maturation, but is shaped jointly by individual cognitive abilities and sociocultural environments.

By setting comprehensive inclusion and exclusion criteria, this systematic review integrated 16 eligible studies to examine the core influencing factors affecting the development of young children's temporal cognitive abilities, as well as the mediating or moderating mechanisms through which these factors operate and their interaction modes. The results show that the development of children's temporal cognition is not a linear improvement in a single ability, but a qualitative transformation from concrete dependence to abstract thinking, driven by the interaction of core cognitive mechanisms, external situational factors, and individual traits. This development process is influenced by both physiological maturation and acquired environments and experiences, providing a more integrated perspective for understanding the nature of children's temporal cognition.

Developmental m echanisms of c hildren's t emporal c ognition

The maturation and development of core cognitive mechanisms underlie children's temporal cognition, with the dynamic interaction between executive function and the internal clock system serving as the primary driving force for this development.

Inhibitory control and cognitive switching within executive function are essential for the accuracy of temporal perception and the orderliness of temporal memory. Inhibitory control and cognitive switching are not by-products of temporal processing, but prerequisites for its accurate performance. For accurate timing, children must inhibit responses to irrelevant stimuli, shift their attention to the timing task, and maintain sustained attention. Without these abilities, achieving accurate timing is challenging. Cognitive switching enables children to flexibly move between different events or tasks, which is the key to accurately judging the temporal order of events. The internal clock system, as the physiological basis, is influenced by increases in pacemaker frequency, and the enhancement of switch regulation efficiency directly affect the stability of temporal perception. At the same time, some higher cognitive abilities (such as attention and working memory) regulate the clock system, which further reflects the mutual promotion of physiological maturation and mental development.

It is worth noting that these two mechanisms do not work in isolation. The maturation of the internal clock system provides the physiological basis for temporal cognition, while executive function shapes children's active regulation of temporal processing. Together, they promote children's transformation from passive reception of temporal stimuli to active integration of temporal information.

Factors d etermining c hildren's t emporal c ognition and t heir m echanisms of a ction

The development of children's temporal cognition is influenced and constrained not only by internal cognitive mechanisms but also by emotions, individual traits, and sociocultural environments.

The influence of emotions on temporal perception depends not only on their valence but also on their position in the temporal sequence. Subsequent emotional stimuli improve timing accuracy by affecting immediate attention, while prior emotions occupy attentional resources, thereby interfering with subsequent timing. This dynamic pattern tends to stabilize with age, reflecting the coordinated development of attention regulation and emotional processing. At the individual level, effortful control is a core trait of temporal cognition, and its predictive power is significantly higher than that of socioeconomic status (SES). Children with high effortful control can better maintain attention and therefore perform better in temporal tasks. In addition, the advantage of female children in temporal reproduction tasks further confirms the importance of gender as a moderating variable. Finally, cultural experience also profoundly shapes temporal cognition. Early literacy skills are a key predictor of children's formation of a left-to-right mental timeline, and their role extends beyond physiological maturation, indicating that cultural practices promote the transformation of temporal thinking from concrete to abstract by constructing abstract representational frameworks.

Developmental t ransformation of r epresentational s tyles from c oncrete to a bstract

The internal clock model has different meanings and interpretations in childhood and adulthood. Children interpret the number of pulses as the number of things that happened, while adults interpret it as the length of time itself. Therefore, a complete theory of temporal cognition must include an interpretation and representation module of the internal clock system. This module is not innate but is influenced by individual language ability, cultural experience, etc., thereby affecting how people convert the original signals of the internal clock into understandable temporal judgments; in addition, the core marker of the development of children's temporal cognition is the transformation of temporal representational styles from concrete imagery to abstract logic. The core marker of temporal cognition development is the shift from concrete to abstract representational styles—young children depend on specific cues. In contrast, older children construct logical connections between objective duration and time passage, supported by cultural experience and cognitive maturation. This transformation marks a shift in temporal cognition from sensory-driven to logical construction.

This representational transformation occurs simultaneously with the development of gesture expression. School-age children and adults use more horizontal gestures to represent time, forming a stable mental timeline. The establishment of this space-time association results from the interaction of cultural experience and cognitive development. The formation of the mental timeline provides children with an abstract tool for emporal thinking, enabling them to separate specific events and independently consider the length and order of time itself. This process closely aligns with the transition from the preoperational to the concrete operational stage in Piaget's cognitive development theory.