Before and after

[Ann Dowker]

There were several papers on this topic in the 70s and 80s. I am not
sure when children *start* to use these terms, but they are quite late
in using them *correctly*: in most studies, being far from perfect even
by 5 or so.

One of Eve Clark's early papers reports that children comprehend and
use the term 'before' earlier than the term 'after', and often use the
term 'before' indiscriminately to mean either. Amidon and Carey obtained
contradictory evidence on this point; but also found that the acquisition
of the terms was a slow and gradual process. The references are:

Clark, E.V. (1971). On the acquisition of the meaning of before and
after. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 10, 266-272.

Amidon, A. and Carey, P. (1972). Why 5-year-olds cannot understand before
and after. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 11, 417-423.


A couple of somewhat more recent papers are:

Gorrell, P., Crain, S. and Fodor, J.D. (1989). Contextual information
and temporal terms. Journal of Child Language, 16, 623-632.

Stevenson, R. and Pollitt, C. (1987). The acquisition of temporal terms.
Journal of Child Language, 14, 533-545.


I hope this is helpful,

Ann