title: Expectancy, controlled attention and automatic attention in prospective temporal judgments.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences Cognitives, CNRS, Marseille, France. macar@lnf.cnrs-mrs.fr
authors.forename: Françoise
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Macar
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D011930:Reaction Time; D012718:Set, Psychology; D013998:Time Perception