Age-related differences in memory for time, temporal reconstruction, and the availability and use of temporal landmarks

• Children, adolescents, and adults recalled the time of a past event on 5 time scales.
• Participants explained their estimates and provided dateable life events (landmarks).
• Time-estimate accuracy increased with age for day-of-week and month estimates only.
• All age groups used reconstruction to estimate the time on most of the scales tested.
• Reports of dateable events showed temporal landmark availability increased with age.

We examined the accuracy of memory for the time of an event, the use of temporal reconstruction, and the availability and use of temporal landmarks from late middle childhood to adulthood. Children, adolescents, and adults (N = 128) viewed a film during a campus visit. Eight months later, we asked them to (a) recall the time of the previous visit on a range of time scales; (b) explain how they arrived at those estimates; and (c) provide other dateable events from their lives (temporal landmarks). The accuracy of time judgments increased with age on the day-of-the-week and month time scales only. All age groups used reconstruction to arrive at their estimates for most of the time scales tested. Reports of dateable events from past years indicated that the availability of temporal landmarks increased across this age range. These results reflect a mixture of similarities and differences across the ages tested.