Brown S W, Stubbs D A
Department of Psychology, University of Southern Maine, Portland 04103.
Perception. 1988;17(3):297-310. doi: 10.1068/p170297.
In two experiments, different groups of subjects heard four musical selections and then estimated the duration of each selection. Some groups made retrospective time estimates while others made prospective estimates. In both experiments, analyses of the psychophysical relation between perceived and actual duration showed that the slopes of straight-line fits were flatter and accounted for a smaller proportion of the variance under retrospective as compared with prospective conditions. In addition, in experiment 1, retrospective subjects were less accurate in rank ordering the selections from longest to shortest. There was also a serial-order effect, with selections estimated longer when they occurred early in the sequence. In experiment 2 the slopes decreased as the selections in a series became longer. Both retrospective and prospective estimates also exhibited a context effect, in that estimates of a given selection were influenced by the relative durations of the other three selections in the series. The results on inaccurate retrospective judgments raise questions about prior research on stimulus factors and retrospective timing. However, similarities under retrospective and prospective conditions suggest that timing under these conditions, although different in some respects, reflects a similar process.
在两项实验中，不同组别的受试者聆听了四段音乐选段，然后估计每段选段的时长。一些组进行回顾性时间估计，而另一些组进行前瞻性估计。在两项实验中，对感知时长与实际时长之间的心理物理关系的分析表明，与前瞻性条件相比，回顾性条件下直线拟合的斜率更平缓，且解释的方差比例更小。此外，在实验1中，回顾性受试者在将选段从最长到最短进行排序时准确性较低。还存在序列顺序效应，即当选段在序列中较早出现时，其估计时长更长。在实验2中，随着一系列选段变长，斜率下降。回顾性和前瞻性估计均表现出情境效应，即对某一给定选段的估计会受到该系列中其他三段选段相对时长的影响。关于回顾性判断不准确的结果引发了对先前关于刺激因素和回顾性计时研究的质疑。然而，回顾性和前瞻性条件下的相似之处表明，这些条件下的计时虽然在某些方面有所不同，但反映了一个相似的过程。
