The understanding of before and after as locational and temporal terms : in five, six, seven, and eight year old children

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of five, six, seven, and eight year old children on their interpretation of "before" and "after" used as locational terms and as temporal terms.

In the locational task, subjects followed a series of instructions to place a toy either before or after another toy. In the temporal task, subjects followed a series of commands to perform two actions with "before" and "after" used as conjunctions.

Statistical analysis indicated that there were no differences among the age groups on either the locational task or the temporal task. However, on the temporal task the children demonstrated significantly better understanding of 'before" as contrasted to "after," and better understanding of sentences in which the order of mention corresponded with the order of occurrence of the two actions.