Brown S W, Bennett E D
Department of Psychology, University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME 04104-9300, USA.
Psychol Res. 2002 Feb;66(1):80-9. doi: 10.1007/s004260100076.
Research on time and attention shows that a nontemporal task may interfere with a concurrent timing task by making time judgments shorter, more variable, and/or more inaccurate compared to timing-only conditions. Brown (1998, Psychological Research, 61, 71-81) counteracted the interference effect by giving subjects automaticity training on a nontemporal task to reduce the amount of processing resources the task required. Such practice attenuated interference in timing. Two new experiments were designed to replicate and extend the previous findings. Subjects generated a series of 5-s temporal productions under single-task (timing only) and dual-task (timing plus nontemporal task) conditions. The nontemporal tasks were pursuit rotor tracking (Experiment 1), and mirror-reversed reading (Experiment 2). We employed a pretest-practice-posttest paradigm, with the practice sessions devoted to performance of the nontemporal task. Pretest-posttest comparisons showed that practice reduced interference in timing in both experiments. Dual-task probe trials were given during the practice sessions to trace the time course of the improvement in timing. The results showed that interference in timing was reduced with even small amounts of practice. The findings support the idea that timing is very sensitive to changes in the allocation of attentional resources.
关于时间和注意力的研究表明，一项非时间任务可能会干扰同时进行的计时任务，与仅进行计时的条件相比，会使时间判断更短、更不稳定和/或更不准确。布朗（1998年，《心理研究》，61卷，71 - 81页）通过让受试者对一项非时间任务进行自动化训练，以减少该任务所需的处理资源量，从而抵消了干扰效应。这种练习减弱了对计时的干扰。设计了两个新实验来重复和扩展先前的研究结果。受试者在单任务（仅计时）和双任务（计时加非时间任务）条件下生成一系列5秒的时间输出。非时间任务分别是追踪转子跟踪（实验1）和镜像反转阅读（实验2）。我们采用了前测 - 练习 - 后测范式，练习环节专门用于进行非时间任务。前测与后测的比较表明，练习在两个实验中都减少了对计时的干扰。在练习环节中进行双任务探测试验，以追踪计时改善的时间进程。结果表明，即使是少量的练习也能减少对计时的干扰。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即计时对注意力资源分配的变化非常敏感。
