What month is it? The process of temporal orientation on a unit of the year scale.
The process of temporal orientation was studied in 977 subjects. They had to respond to one of the following questions: 'What is (was, will be) the current (previous, next) month?', and to explain 'how' they had come to answer as they did. In the majority of cases, temporal landmarks justifying the responses referred to the present, whatever the context of the question. The use of Future Landmarks increased from the beginning to the end of the month, and from the Previous Month question to the Next Month question. Response times varied with the type of temporal landmarks, and with the question context. On average, users of a Future Landmark responded faster. Results are discussed in relation to results of other studies using a 'days of the week' scale. The different use of past, current and future landmarks supports a hypothesis that response identification depends on the functional importance of the landmarks underlying a spreading activation process.
Valax
M F
MF
Laboratoire Trarail & Cognition, Maison de la recherche, Toulouse, France. valax@cict.fr
Tremblay
E
E
Sarocchi
F
F
D000328:Adult; D013181:Cortical Spreading Depression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009949:Orientation; D011340:Problem Solving; D011930:Reaction Time; D012016:Reference Values; D013998:Time Perception