Temporal expectations critically influence perception and action. Previous research reports contradictory results in children’s ability to endogenously orient attention in time as well as the developmental course. To reconcile this seemingly conflicting evidence, we put forward the hypothesis that expectancy violations—through the use of invalid trials—are the source of the mixed evidence reported in the literature. With the aim of offering new results that could reconcile previous findings, we tested a group of young children (4- to 7-year-olds), an older group (8- to 12-year-olds), and a group of adults. Temporal cues provided expectations about target onset time, and invalid trials were used such that the target appeared at the unexpected time in 25% of the trials. In both experiments, the younger children responded faster in valid trials than in invalid trials, showing that they benefited from the temporal cue. These results show that young children rely on temporal expectations to orient attention in time endogenously. Importantly, younger children exhibited greater validity effects than older children and adults, and these effects correlated positively with participants’ performance in the invalid (unexpected) trials. We interpret the reduction of validity effects with age as an index of better adaptation to the invalid (unexpected) condition. By using invalid trials and testing three age groups, we demonstrate that previous findings are not inconsistent. Rather, evidence converges when considering the presence of expectancy violations that require executive control mechanisms, which develop progressively during childhood. We propose a distinction between rigid and flexible mechanisms of temporal orienting to accommodate all findings.

时间预期会严重影响感知和行动。先前的研究报告了儿童在时间和发展过程中内源性注意力的能力方面的矛盾结果。为了调和这个看似矛盾的证据，我们提出假设违反预期——通过使用无效试验——是文献中报告的混合证据的来源。为了提供能够与先前发现相一致的新结果，我们测试了一组幼儿（4 至 7 岁）、一组年龄较大的儿童（8 至 12 岁）和一组成年人. 时间线索提供了对目标开始时间的预期，并且使用了无效试验，使得目标出现在 25% 的试验中的意外时间。在这两个实验中，年幼的孩子在有效试验中的反应比在无效试验中更快，这表明他们受益于时间线索。这些结果表明，幼儿依赖于时间期望来内生地在时间上定向注意力。重要的是，年幼的儿童比年长的儿童和成人表现出更大的效度效应，并且这些效应与参与者在无效（意外）试验中的表现呈正相关。我们将效度效应随年龄的降低解释为更好地适应无效（意外）条件的指标。通过使用无效试验和测试三个年龄组，我们证明以前的发现并不矛盾。相反，当考虑到需要执行控制机制的预期违规时，证据会收敛，这些机制在儿童时期逐渐发展。