Time reading skills are central for the management of personal and professional life. However, little is known about the differential influence of basic numerical abilities on analog and digital time reading in general and in middle and secondary school students in particular. The present study investigated the influence of basic numerical skills separately for analog and digital time reading in N = 709 students from 5th to 8th grade. The present findings suggest that the development of time reading skills is not completed by the end of primary school. Results indicated that aspects of magnitude manipulation and arithmetic fact knowledge predicted analog time reading significantly over and above the influence of age. Furthermore, results showed that spatial representations of number magnitude, magnitude manipulation, arithmetic fact knowledge, and conceptual knowledge were significant predictors of digital time reading beyond general cognitive ability and sex. To the best of our knowledge, the present study is the first to show differential effects of basic numerical abilities on analog and digital time reading skills in middle and secondary school students. As time readings skills are crucial for everyday life, these results are highly relevant to better understand basic numerical processes underlying time reading.

时间阅读技能对于个人和职业生活的管理至关重要。然而，人们对基本数字能力对模拟时间和数字时间阅读的总体影响，特别是中学生和中等学生的差别影响知之甚少。本研究分别调查了N  = 709位5至8年级学生的基本数字技能对模拟和数字时间阅读的影响。目前的发现表明，到小学结束时，时间阅读技能的发展尚未完成。结果表明，幅度控制和算术事实知识的各个方面预测了模拟时间读数将大大超过年龄的影响。此外，结果表明数字量级，空间量级处理，算术事实知识和概念性知识的空间表示形式是数字时间阅读的重要预测指标，超越了一般的认知能力和性别。据我们所知，本研究是第一个显示基本数字能力对中学生模拟和数字时间阅读技能的不同影响的研究。由于时间阅读技巧对日常生活至关重要，因此这些结果与更好地理解时间阅读基础的基本数字过程高度相关。