Development of time

- Babies inherit a brain that is intrinsically adapted to processing time.
- Time sensitivity improves with age.
- Young children's time judgments are highly sensitive to contextual effects.
- Development of general cognitive capacities explains age-related differences in time sensitivity for the temporal tasks used.
- A noisy and less efficient clock system for young children is discussed.

The young children inherit a brain that is intrinsically adapted to processing the flow of events together with their temporal characteristics, that is a veritable time machine. However, this does not mean that there is no change in timing abilities over childhood. Indeed, the precision of time judgment improves with age and young children's time judgments are highly sensitive to contextual effects. The actual issue is to succeed to dissociate the effects on time judgment that are due to the development of specific time mechanisms from those that result from the development of general cognitive capacities.