Understanding the Ontogenesis of Temporal Regulation in Infants and Children: An evaluation of the Procedures

A critique of the operant procedures used to study the ontogenesis of temporal regulation in infants and children is presented. The main thesis is that there is a transition in such regulation from nonhuman-like contingency-governed operant behavior to verbally-governed behavior in humans. Some studies have shown that responding of infants and young children during fixed-interval (FI) and differential-reinforcement-of-low rate (DRL) schedules is typical of the behavior of nonhumans under such schedules, but other studies have yielded different results. These inconsistent data may be explained by procedural differences between the experiments. The understanding and modelling of the ontogenesis of temporal regulation in humans require further experimental analyses that take into consideration the methodological differences between human and nonhuman animal studies outlined in this review.