The Development of Temporal Memory for Complex Events

Remembering when past events occurred is a key component of episodic memory, yet its developmental trajectory remains only partially understood. This study examined how children aged 6 and 10, compared to young adults, recall the timing of events embedded in an 11-min cartoon. After viewing the cartoon, participants estimated the time of occurrence of short clips extracted from the narrative by placing them on a visual analogue scale representing the episode's duration. They also completed a number line task to assess visuospatial magnitude representation and a chronological reordering task (adapted from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III), to evaluate narrative chronological organization. Results revealed a clear age-related improvement in temporal precision. Older children showed almost adult-like performance and exhibited less bias than younger children. Crucially, differences in visuospatial skills did not fully account for this developmental trend, as controlling for number line and reordering performance did not eliminate age-related effects. Additionally, only older children showed improved timing estimates for clips rated as more important, indicating the emerging role of narrative structure as a mnemonic scaffold during the school years. Correlational analyses further suggest a developmental shift from spatial to more abstract, narrative-based representations of time. These findings highlight primary school years as a crucial window for the development of temporal memory in naturalistic contexts and suggest a gradual progression from perceptual to conceptual time representations.