Expectancy, controlled attention and automatic attention in prospective temporal judgments

✍ Scribed by Françoise Macar

• Book ID: 113966664
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 180 KB
• Volume: 111
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0001-6918
• DOI: 10.1016/s0001-6918(02)00052-5

✦ Synopsis

Two experiments indicate that prospective judgments of a temporal target are influenced by nontarget temporal features. The basic task was to reproduce a target interval marked by visual events. In addition, visual or auditory interfering events were delivered. Experiment 1 showed that temporal reproduction is shorter when the interfering events occupy a late rather than early position during the target interval, a result explained in terms of expectancy, which causes attention shifts. This study also revealed that similar trends are obtained whether the interfering event involves a specific task or is irrelevant. Experiment 2 confirmed the position effect, and showed that the duration of an irrelevant cue can influence judgment of the target interval, as if it were also timed without appropriate control.