Interference from short-term memory processing on encoding and reproducing brief durations

Abstract

A temporal reproduction task is composed of two temporal estimation phases: encoding of the interval to be reproduced, followed by its reproduction. The effect of short-term memory processing on each of these phases was tested in two experiments. In Exp. 1, a memory set was presented, followed by two successive tones bounding the target interval to be reproduced. During the reproduction of the target interval, a probe was presented, and the subject ended the reproduction by pressing one of two keys, depending on the presence or absence of the probe in the memory set. In Exp. 2, probe recognition was required during the encoding of the interval to be reproduced. Whereas in Exp. 1 reproductions lengthened as a function of memory-set size, in Exp. 2 temporal reproductions decreased with set size. These results support attentional models of time estimation and suggest that short-term memory processing interrupts concurrent accumulation of temporal information.

Temporal interval production and short-term memory

“…Indeed, it has been argued by Fortin, Duchet, and Rousseau (1996) that errors in timing are a sensitive probe of the loading of short-term memory by a concurrent task. Here, passive retention of pitch information produced a load-related effect on timing, in contrast to the lack of a load-related effect for timbre and color reported here and for digits by Fortin and Rousseau (1998). One possibility that should be considered is that the unusual result for pitch occurred because the processing involved in the storage of pitch is more active than that required by the storage of the other memoranda.…”

“…This question has been addressed by requiring subjects to perform temporal judgments while they simultaneously perform a secondary nontemporal task. In a temporal reproduction task, in which subjects are first presented with a target interval and then attempt to reproduce it as accurately as possible, a secondary task performed when the target interval is being reproduced lengthens the reproduced interval (e.g., Fortin & Rousseau, 1998). However, when the secondary task is performed instead during the presentation of the target interval, the reproduced interval is shortened.…”

Time perception with and without a concurrent nontemporal task

“…Furthermore, assuming that the rate of pulse accumulation does not differ between the sample and the response phases of the trial under the 1-1 condition, the slope of the function relating reproduced duration to sample duration should approximate a value of 1.0 (Carlson & Feinberg, 1968). Fortin and Rousseau (1998), using sample durations ranging from 1.6 to 2.4 sec, demonstrated task location effects consistent with the foregoing description for the 1-0 and 0-1 conditions. A short-term memory-processing task was presented during the sample or the reproduction phase of temporal reproduction trials.…”

GAMIT – A Fading-Gaussian Activation Model of Interval-Timing: Unifying Prospective and Retrospective Time Estimation

“…Activation decay and growth processes are ubiquitous and well understood and can account for evidence that timing and memory use the same cognitive resources (Fortin, 1999;Fortin & Rousseau, 1998) and both recruit the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (Genovesio et al, 2006;Wager & Smith, 2003). However, derivation of the scalar property is not always straightforward in these models.…”