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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Human Developmental Psychology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1623713

The Development of Temporal Cognition in Hearing-Impaired Children and Educational Recommendations

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, China
  • 2Jinggangshan University, Ji'an, China
  • 3Jinggangshan University, Ji'an City, Jiangxi Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

An experiment was conducted by temporal sequencing, selection, and judgment tasks to investigate the developmental characteristics of temporal cognition in hearing-impaired children and propose targeted educational strategies.Participants included 79 hearing-impaired students (aged 11-17) from special education schools, grouped into lower- (11-13 years), middle- (14-15 years) and upper-grade (16-17 years) cohorts.. All participants had bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, used hearing aids regularly, and received structured auditory rehabilitation. Tasks assessed both concrete short-term sequences(e.g., water flowing in funnels) and integrated long-term sequences (e.g., seasonal cycles, abstract time concepts). Results revealed three key findings including: (1) Age-Related Progression. Temporal cognition in hearing-impaired children exhibited a clear developmental trajectory, with performance improving steadily with age. A rapid growth phase was observed in the middle-grade group (14–15 years), indicating a critical period for intervention; (2) Concrete vs. Integrated Temporal Cognition.Children demonstrated superior performance in short-term, concrete temporal tasks (e.g., daily routines) compared to long-term, integrated tasks (e.g., abstract time concepts or seasonal cycles); (3)Future-Oriented Bias: Future-oriented temporal cognition significantly outperformed past-oriented cognition, suggesting unique compensatory mechanisms in temporal reasoning. Time span, temporal representation, children's life experiences, and event complexity were important factors that affected the temporal cognitive development of hearing-impaired children. These findings underscore the need for tailored educational approaches that leverage visual-spatial strengths and experiential learning and inform auditory rehabilitation practices.

Keywords: Hearing-impaired children, Temporal succession cognition, developmental trajectories, compensatory education, temporal cognition

Received: 06 May 2025; Accepted: 17 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 FANG and Yin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Guanhai Yin, yinguanhai@163.com

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