Concepts about Interrelations among Duration, Distance, and Speed in Young Children

The main purpose of the present study was to clarify the developmental processes of the awareness of relations between duration, distance, and speed relative to linear movement, using a set of equivalent tasks for the three concepts. The participants were 84 children aged from 4 years 0 months to 6 years 11 months. In the initial phase, children were approaching awareness of the direct relations between duration and distance, and distance and speed. Subsequent to this initial phase, children began to be aware of the inverse relation between duration and speed. However, this developmental direction was not completely monotonic. That is: (1) a completely correct grasp of the two direct relations seemed to strengthen an incorrect grasp of the relation between duration and speed as direct; and (2) incorrect answers regarding the two relations as inverse seemed to appear a little more often when the inverse relation between duration and speed began to be sometimes correctly grasped. Finally, children were almost fully aware of the two direct relations and the one inverse relation. However, even in this state, children seemed to judge intuitively and not based on the duration-distance-speed system but based on the co-ordination of two by two relations.