Article

Effect of Interpolated Temporal Activity on Temporal Short-Term Memory

SAGE Publications Inc
Perceptual and Motor Skills
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Abstract

The purpose of this research was to determine the retroactive interference effects of a single interpolated task (i.e., one temporal duration) on the retention of a criterion duration. This research is of interest because the mnemonic structure of temporal information of different durations is uncertain. Previous research has indicated that there might be a difference in structure for durations of 1 and 4 sec., although the results are inconsistent. Thus, two criterion durations of 1 and 4 sec. and five interpolated durations (i.e., 60%, 80%, 100%, 120%, and 140% of the duration of the criterion) were utilized under the method of reproduction. In addition, subjects were instructed to use either a counting strategy or none (referred to as conscious time estimation) to facilitate the retention of the temporal information. Recall was less variable when using a counting strategy than not and when estimating 1 sec. than 4 sec. However, there was no effect of interpolated activity when comparing performance across different interpolated conditions (no interpolated activity). Apparently, one interpolated duration is not sufficient to produce structural interference with a single criterion duration.

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... Another kind of evidence for duration-specificity comes from counting or by other means subdividing intervals, which typically increases the precision in temporal tasks. Getty (1976) found that the standard deviation of reproduced intervals formed by counting at a prescribed rate was smaller than for intervals produced without counting, a result also found for a task requiring short term retention of intervals (Guay & Salmoni, 1988). A similar conclusion was reached by Killeen and Weiss (1987), who analysed temporal discrimination data from several other studies and found that counting within a range of optimal subintervals made the standard deviation independent of the interval to be timed. ...
... Without any EC at all (p = 0), the current interval can not be directly compared with the previous interval, but it may be based on the less accurate mechanism used for the reproduction of intervals with a few seconds duration (Grondin, 1992; Guay & Salmoni, 1988). With first-order EC, the current interval can be rather precisely timed according to the previous interval, which should on average reduce the amplitude of the long-term drift in relation to the level of shortterm random noise. ...
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Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala universitet, 2001. Includes bibliographical references.
... The main effect for trials [ the trials within each timing condition showed that the productions did not change across trials in the 2-sec condition (F < 1), but they steadily increased in the 5-sec condition [ Given that the subjects generated a fairly large number of temporal productions on each trial, the data provide an ideal opportunity for an analysis of timing variability. Several studies (e.g., Brown & West, 1990; Guay & Salmoni, 1988) indicate that SD scores and other variability measures may be very sensitive at detecting perturbations in timing. The SD of the temporal productions in each condition was calculated for each subject. ...
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