Temporal causal reasoning (TCR) involves using temporal information from sequential events to infer causal relationships, comprising diagnostic reasoning and predictive reasoning. During the preschool years, TCR undergoes rapid yet asymmetric development: diagnostic reasoning emerges earlier, while predictive reasoning develops later. This developmental asymmetry may be associated with the maturation of temporal direction representation, the ability to mentally represent events in a specific temporal order. However, the robustness of this asymmetry and the cognitive mechanisms underlying it remain unclear. This study addressed two questions: first, whether children aged 4 to 6 years exhibit a developmental asymmetry in TCR, with diagnostic reasoning preceding predictive reasoning; and second, whether temporal direction representation contributes to this asymmetry. Experiment 1 measured 4- to 6-year-olds’ TCR ability and their tendencies in temporal direction representation, revealing that 4–6-year-old children exhibit a developmental pattern where diagnostic reasoning precedes predictive reasoning: 4-year-olds succeeded only in diagnostic reasoning, whereas children aged 5 and 6 performed above chance in both types of reasoning. In addition, preliminary associations between temporal direction representation and TCR performance were revealed. Experiment 2 primed children with different temporal direction representations, revealing that backward temporal priming facilitated diagnostic reasoning, with this effect varying by age and proving particularly strong for 4- and 5-year-olds. These findings highlight a robust developmental asymmetry in TCR and provide novel evidence that temporal direction representation plays a role in it, highlighting the importance of understanding the link between temporal and causal direction for children’s causal learning.
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