N Massé | PubMed Health

PubMed2000

Expecting a break in time estimation: attentional time-sharing without concurrent processing.

The interference from nontemporal processing on concurrent time estimation is usually attributed to disruption in timing caused by attentional requirements of nontemporal processing. Here, we examined interruption in timing without concurrent nontemporal processing. Empty breaks of various durations, during time-interval production, lengthened produced intervals. Moreover, an effect of break location was observed: Intervals lengthened proportionally to prebreak duration. When cued and uncued uninterrupted trials were introduced, the lengthening was proportional to the duration for which a break was expected. It was concluded that attentional time-sharing between time estimation and expectation of its interruption contributed to the interference effect in time-estimation research, independently of any concurrent processing requirements during time estimation.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1999

Order information in short-term memory and time estimation.

In previous experiments, the amount of interference between time production and visual or memory search tasks was shown not to be related to the level of difficulty of the search task per se, but instead to the amount of processing in short-term memory required in the search task. The first experiment of the present study verified whether the amount of interference between time production and a short-term memory task may be related to the level of difficulty of the short-term memory task. Two versions of a memory task, with and without processing of order information, were combined with a temporal interval production task in a concurrent processing condition. As is shown in a control reaction time task, processing order information increased the level of difficulty of the memory search task. In the concurrent processing condition, the interference between short-term memory processing and time production was stronger when the level of difficulty of the short-term memory search task was increased by requiring that order information be processed. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the amount of interference between a similar short-term memory task and time production seems not to be related to the amount of order information that must be maintained during the time production task. This dissociation between the effects of processing and the maintenance of order information is compatible with a similar dissociation, observed in previous experiments, between the effects of processing and those of maintaining item information in short-term memory on concurrent time production.

Adult↗