Institute of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2012 Mar;18(2):351-60. doi: 10.1017/S1355617711001809. Epub 2012 Jan 23.
Accessing the temporal position of events (early or late in the event sequence) can influence the generation of predictions about upcoming events. However, it is unclear how the temporal position is processed strategically. To investigate this, we presented event pairs to 23 healthy volunteers manipulating temporal order (chronological, inverse) and temporal position (early, late). Pupil dilation, eye movements, and behavioral data, showed that chronological and early event pairs are processed with more ease than inverse and late event pairs. Indexed by the pupillary response late events and inversely presented event pairs elicited greater cognitive processing demands than early events and chronologically presented event pairs. Regarding eye movements, fixation duration was less sensitive to temporal position than to temporal order. Looking at each item of the event sequence only once was behaviorally more effective than looking multiple times at each event regardless of whether temporal position or temporal order was processed. These results emphasize that accessing temporal position and temporal order information results in dissociable behavioral patterns. While more cognitive resources are necessary for processing late and inverse items, change of information acquisition strategies turns out to be most effective when temporal order processing is required.
获取事件的时间位置（事件序列中的早期或晚期）会影响对即将发生的事件的预测生成。然而，目前尚不清楚时间位置是如何被策略性地处理的。为了研究这一点，我们向 23 名健康志愿者呈现了事件对，操纵了时间顺序（按时间顺序、逆序）和时间位置（早期、晚期）。瞳孔扩张、眼动和行为数据表明，按时间顺序呈现的早期事件对比逆序呈现的晚期事件对更容易被处理。通过瞳孔反应指标，晚期事件和逆序呈现的事件对比早期事件和按时间顺序呈现的事件对引起了更大的认知处理需求。关于眼动，注视持续时间对时间位置的敏感性不如对时间顺序的敏感性。与无论处理时间顺序还是时间位置，每次只看一次事件序列中的每个项目相比，多次查看每个项目在行为上更有效。这些结果强调了访问时间位置和时间顺序信息会导致不同的行为模式。虽然处理晚期和逆行项目需要更多的认知资源，但当需要处理时间顺序信息时，改变信息获取策略是最有效的。
