Desai Chetan, Bader Farah, Wiener Martin
Department of Psychology, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, VA, 22030, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Oct;87(7):2121-2128. doi: 10.3758/s13414-025-03115-5. Epub 2025 Jul 9.
Recent behavioral studies have shown that humans possess self-awareness of their individual timing ability in that they can discern the direction of their timing error. However, in these studies which included a single repeat (re-do) trial for each duration, it remains unclear whether the reduction in errors in the re-do trials was due to self-awareness of individual timing ability or because the participants used the feedback from the initial trials to improve on the re-do ones. To investigate this further, we conducted a behavioral study in which subjects were divided into two groups: one in which the "re-do" phase occurred frequently, but not always (80% of trials; called the "high-double" group), and one in which re-do trials were rare (20% of trials; called the "low-double" group). This was done to test the possibility of subjects relying on the re-do trials as a method of improvement. Subjects significantly improved in their performance on re-do trials regardless of whether re-dos were rare or frequent. Further, an unexpected finding was observed, where subjects in the low-double group also overall performed better than those in the high-double group. This finding suggests that subjects, knowing that re-do opportunities were rare, engaged better timing at the outset; yet these subjects still improved on re-do trials, suggesting humans are able to incorporate both global uncertainty and feedback.
最近的行为研究表明，人类对自己的个体计时能力具有自我意识，因为他们能够辨别计时误差的方向。然而，在这些每项持续时间都包含单次重复（重新进行）试验的研究中，重新进行试验时误差的减少是由于对个体计时能力的自我意识，还是因为参与者利用初始试验的反馈来改进重新进行的试验，仍不清楚。为了进一步研究这一点，我们进行了一项行为研究，将受试者分为两组：一组中“重新进行”阶段频繁出现，但并非总是出现（80%的试验；称为“高重复”组），另一组中重新进行试验很少（20%的试验；称为“低重复”组）。这样做是为了测试受试者将重新进行试验作为一种改进方法的可能性。无论重新进行试验是很少还是频繁，受试者在重新进行试验时的表现都有显著提高。此外，还观察到一个意外发现，即低重复组的受试者总体表现也优于高重复组。这一发现表明，受试者知道重新进行试验的机会很少，一开始就进行了更好的计时；然而，这些受试者在重新进行试验时仍然有所改进，这表明人类能够综合考虑整体不确定性和反馈。
