The purpose of this article is to present two experiments investigatin
g the ability of children. aged 4, 5 to 7 years to reason about tempor
al problems. The first experiment indicates that within the same probl
em space, temporal problems are not found by children to be of equal c
omplexity, and secondly that children throughout the age range investi
gated were able to solve temporal problems with varying sophistication
. The second experiment continued the investigation of temporal proble
m solving using a computer based task. Children's performance was comp
ared when were given feedback about the effectiveness of their solutio
ns and when no feedback was given. The data suggested firstly, that fe
edback contributes to the level of sophistication of the solutions off
ered rather than to overall success, and secondly that the feedback co
ndition contributes to an understanding of the problem space such that
children who were given feedback were more effective problem solvers
in a subsequent retest.