Children´s past and future account: A study with three social groups from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

ROSEMBERG, CELIA RENATA; ALAM, FLORENCIA; MIGDALEK, MAIA JULIETA

Budapest

Congreso; CEU Conference on Cognitive Development; 2013

P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } This study analyzes the future and past talk produced by children from three social groups in Argentina: marginalized-urban neighborhoods (MU), Toba native suburban communities (TN) and middle-income families (MI). The theoretical perspective (Nelson, 1996, 2007; Hudson, 2006) maintains that a critical dimension of cognitive and linguistic development is the reconstruction of the past and the prediction of future events. The concept of time is itself a social construction and it is conveyed to children through language. That is why this study explores differences in the accounts produced by the three groups of children. The data consists of 90 accounts -45 future and 45 past- produced by 45 4-year-old children, 15 from each group. The accounts were based on ?The Children´s Day?, a widespread celebration in Argentina. Children were asked to give a future account of their plans for that day and after the celebration they produced a past account. Analysis considered: a) the temporal frame of reference; b) the use of temporal terms. Findings showed no differences in the temporal terms used in past accounts. In future accounts differences were found. TN children included less temporal terms per elaboration (0.12) than the other two groups; MU children included less temporal terms (0.22) than MI (0.3). Differences were also found in the temporal frames of reference in the future accounts: MI children used more hypothetical frames of reference (0.11) than the other two groups (TN: 0.03; UM: 0.02). Findings were interpreted based on socio-cultural and linguistic characteristics of the groups. References Nelson, K. (1996). Language in cognitive development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nelson, K. (2007). Young Minds in Social Worlds. Experience, meaning and memory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hudson, J.A. (2006). The development of Future Time Concepts through Mother- Child Conversation. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 52, 70-95.