The Library

Identification and bisection of temporal durations and tone frequencies: common models for temporal and nontemporal stimuli

Tools

Brown, G. D. A. (Gordon D. A.), McCormack, Teresa, Smith, Mark and Stewart, Neil, 1974-. (2005) Identification and bisection of temporal durations and tone frequencies: common models for temporal and nontemporal stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Vol.31 (No.5). pp. 919-938. ISSN 0096-1523

Preview

PDF
WRAP_Stewart_identification.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader
Download (473Kb)

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.31.5.919

Abstract

Two experiments examined identification and bisection of tones varying in temporal duration (Experiment 1) or frequency (Experiment 2). Absolute identification of both durations and frequencies was influenced by prior stimuli and by stimulus distribution. Stimulus distribution influenced bisection for both stimulus types consistently, with more positively skewed distributions producing lower bisection points. The effect of distribution was greater when the ratio of the largest to smallest stimulus magnitude was greater. A simple mathematical model, temporal range frequency theory, was applied. It is concluded that (a) similar principles describe identification of temporal durations and other stimulus dimensions and (b) temporal bisection point shifts can be understood in terms of psychophysical principles independently developed in nontemporal domains, such as A. Parducci's (1965) range frequency theory.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Divisions:	Faculty of Science > Psychology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Perception -- Modeling, Human information processing
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
Publisher:	American Psychological Association
ISSN:	0096-1523
Date:	October 2005
Volume:	Vol.31
Number:	No.5
Page Range:	pp. 919-938
Identification Number:	10.1037/0096-1523.31.5.919
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Funder:	Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC), Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Great Britain) (BBSRC)
Grant number:	R000239351 (ESRC), R000239002 (ESRC), 88/S15050 (BBSRC)
References:	Allan, L. G. (2002a). Are the referents remembered in temporal bisection? Learning and Motivation, 33, 10-31. Allan, L. G. (2002b). The location and interpretation of the bisection point. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55B, 43-60. Allan, L. G., & Gerhardt, K. (2001). Temporal bisection with trial referents. Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 524-540. Allan, L. G., & Gibbon, J. (1991). Human bisection at the geometric mean. Learning and Motivation, 22, 39-58. Berliner, J. E., & Durlach, N. I. (1973). Intensity perception: IV. Resolution in roving-level discrimination. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 53, 1270- 1287. Block, R. A., & Zakay, D. (1997). Prospective and retrospective duration judgments: A meta-analytic review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 184-197. Bower, G. H. (1971). Adaptation-level coding of stimuli and serial position effects. In M. H. Appley (Ed.), Adaptation-level theory (pp. 175-201). New York: Academic Press. Braida, L. D., & Durlach, N. I. (1972). Intensity perception. II. Resolution in oneinterval paradigms. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 51, 483-502. Brown, G. D. A., Neath, I., & Chater, N. (2002). A ratio model of scale-invariant memory and identification. Manuscript submitted for publication. Church, R. M., & Deluty, M. Z. (1977). Bisection of temporal intervals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 3, 216-228. DeSoto, C. B., & Bosley, J. G. (1962). The cognitive structure of a social structure. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 64, 303-307. Dragoi, V., Staddon, J. E. R., Palmer, R. G., & Buhsi, C. V. (2003). Interval timing as an emergent learning property. Psychological Review, 110, 126-144. Droit-Volet, S., Clement, A., & Fayol, M. (2003). Time and number discrimination in a bisection task with a sequence of stimuli: A developmental approach. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 84, 63-76. Droit-Volet, S., & Wearden, J. (2001). Temporal bisection in children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 80, 142-159. Droit-Volet S., Wearden J. (2002). Speeding up an internal clock in children? Effects of visual flicker on subjective duration. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55B, 193-211. Ebenholtz, S. M. (1963). Position mediated transfer between serial learning and a spatial discrimination task. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65, 603-608. Ennis, D. M. (1988). Confusable and discriminable stimuli: Comment on Nosofsky (1986) and Shepard (1986). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 408-411. Eriksen, C.W., & Hake, H.W. (1957). Anchor effects in absolute judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53, 132-138. Garner, W. R. (1953). An informational analysis of absolute judgments of loudness. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 46, 373-380. Garner, W. R. (1962). Uncertainty and structure and psychological concepts. New York: Wiley. Gautier T., & Droit-Volet S. (2002). Attentional distraction and time perception in children. International Journal of Psychology, 37, 27-34. Gibbon, J. (1981). On the form and location of the psychometric bisection function for time. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 24, 58-87. Gibbon, J. (1986). The structure of subjective time: How time flies. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 20, 105-135. Gibbon, J., Church, R. M., & Meck, W. H. (1984). Scalar timing in memory. In J. Gibbon & L. G. Allan (Eds.), Timing and time perception (pp. 52-77). New York: New York Academy of Sciences. Helson, H. (1964). Adaptation level theory. New York: Harper & Row. Holland, M. K., & Lockhead, G. R. (1968). Sequential effects in absolute judgments of loudness. Perception & Psychophysics, 3, 409-414. Hu, G. (1997). Why is it difficult to learn absolute judgment tasks? Perceptual and Motor Skills, 84, 323-335. Jensen, A. R. (1962). Temporal and spatial effects of serial position. American Journal of Psychology, 75, 390-400. Jesteadt, W., Luce, R. D., & Green, D. M. (1977). Sequential effects of the judgments of loudness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 3, 92-104. Killeen, P. R., & Fetterman, J. G. (1988). A behavioral theory of timing. Psychological Review, 95, 274-295. Killeen, P. R., & Taylor, T. J. (2000). How the propagation of error through stochastic counters affects time discrimination and other psychophysical judgments. Psychological Review, 107, 430-459. Krumhansl, C. L. (1978). Concerning the applicability of geometric models to similarity data: The interrelationship between similarity and spatial density. Psychological Review, 85, 445-463. Lacouture, Y. (1997). Bow, range, and sequential effects in absolute identification: A response-time analysis. Psychological Research, 60, 121-133. Lacouture, Y., Grondin, S., & Mori, S. (2001). Absolute identification of temporal intervals: Preliminary data. In E. Sommerfeld, R. Kompass, T. Lachmann (Eds.). Proceedings of the Seventeenth Meeting of the International Society of Psychophysics. Berlin: Pabst Science Publishers. Lacouture, Y., & Marley, A. A. J. (1991). A connectionist model of choice and reaction time in absolute identification. Connection Science, 3, 401-433. Lacouture, Y., & Marley, A. A. J. (1995). A mapping model of the bow effects in absolute identification. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 39, 383-395. Laming, D. R. J. (1984). The relativity of 'absolute' judgment. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 37, 152-183. Lockhead, G. R. (1984). Sequential predictors of choice in psychophysical tasks. In S. Kornblum & J. Requin (Eds.), Preparatory states and processes (pp. 27-47). Hillsdale, NJ:Erlbaum. Lockhead, G. R., & King, M. C. (1983). A memory model of sequential effects in scaling tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 9, 461-473. Long, L. (1937). A study of the effect of preceding stimuli upon the judgment of auditory intensities. Archives of Psychology (New York), 30, No. 209. Luce, R. D., Green, D. M., & Weber, D. L. (1976). Attention bands in absolute identification. Perception & Psychophysics, 20, 49-54. Luce, R. D., Nosofsky, R. M., Green, D. M., & Smith, A. F. (1982). The bow and sequential effects in absolute identification. Perception & Psychophysics, 32, 397-408. Machado, A. (1997). Learning the temporal dynamics of behavior. Psychological Review, 104, 241-265. Machado, A., & Guilhardi, P. (2000). Shifts in the psychometric function and their implications for models of timing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 74, 35-54. Machado, A., & Keen, R. (1999). Learning to time (LeT) or scalar expectancy theory (SET)? A critical test of two models of timing. Psychological Science, 10, 285- 290. Machado, A., & Keen, R. (2003). Temporal discrimination in a long operant chamber. Behavioural Processes, 62, 157-182. Marley, A. A. J., & Cook, V. T. (1984). A fixed rehearsal capacity interpretation of limits on absolute identification performance. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 37, 136-151. McCormack, T., Brown, G. D. A., Maylor, E. A., Darby, R. J., & Green, D. (1999). Developmental changes in time estimation: Comparing childhood and old age. Developmental Psychology, 35, 1143-1155. McCormack, T., Brown, G. D. A., Maylor, E. A., Richardson, L. B. N., & Darby, R. J. (2002). Effects of aging on absolute identification of duration. Psychology and Aging, 17, 363-378. Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for information processing. Psychological Review, 63, 81-97. Murdock, B. B. (1960). The distinctiveness of stimuli. Psychological Review, 67, 16-31. Nosofsky, R. M. (1983). Shifts of attention in the identification and discrimination of intensity. Perception & Psychophysics, 33, 103-112. Nosofsky, R. M. (1986). Attention, similarity, and the identification- categorization relationship. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115, 39-57. Nosofsky, R. M. (1988). On exemplar-based exemplar representations: Reply to Ennis (1988). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 412-414. Nosofsky, R. M. (1997). An exemplar-based random-walk model of speeded categorization and absolute judgment. In A. A. J. Marley (Ed.), Choice, decision, and measurement (pp. 347-365). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Parducci, A. (1965). Category judgment: A range-frequency model. Psychological Review, 72, 407-418. Parducci, A. (1968). The relativism of absolute judgment. Scientific American, 219, 84-90. Parducci, A. (1995). Happiness, pleasure, and judgment: The contextual theory and its applications. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Platt, J. R., & Davis, E. R. (1983). Bisection of temporal intervals by pigeons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 9, 160-170. Penney, T.B., Allan, L.G., Meck, W.H., & Gibbon, J. (1998). Memory mixing in duration bisection. In D.A. Rosenbaum & C.E. Collyer (Eds.), Timing of behavior: Neural, computational, and psychological perspectives (pp. 165-193). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Penney, T. B., Gibbon, J., & Meck, W.H. (2000). Differential effects of auditory and visual signals on clock speed and temporal memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26, 1770-1787. Pollio, H. R., & Deitchman, R. (1964). The activational characteristics of a serial cognitive structure having oppositional end points. Mimeographed manuscript, University of Tennessee. Pollack, I. (1952). The information of elementary auditory displays. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 24, 745-749. Purks, S. R., Callahan, D. J., Braida, L. D., & Durlach, N. I. (1980). Intensity perception. X. Effect of preceding stimulus on identification performance. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 67, 634-637. Rattat A. C., & Droit-Volet S. (2001). Variability in 5- and 8-year-olds' memory for duration: an interfering task in temporal bisection. Behavioural Processes, 55, 81-91. Raslear, T. G. (1983). A test of the Pfanzagl bisection model in rats. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 9, 49-62. Raslear, T. G. (1985). Perceptual bias and response bias in temporal bisection. Perception & Psychophysics, 38, 261-268. Rodriguez-Girones, M., & Kacelnik, A. (2001). Relative importance of perceptual and mnemonic variance in human temporal bisection, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A, 527-546. Shepard, R. N. (1987). Toward a universal law of generalization for psychological science. Science, 237, 1317-1323. Shepard, R. N. (1987). Time and distance in generalization and discrimination: Reply to Ennis (1988). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 117, 415-416. Siegel, S. F. (1986). A test of the similarity rule model of temporal bisection. Learning and Motivation, 17, 59-75. Siegel, S. F., & Church, R. M. (1984). The decision rule in temporal bisection. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 423, 643-645. Staddon, J. E. R., & Higa, J. J. (1999). Time and memory: Towards a pacemaker-free theory of interval timing. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 71, 215-251. Staddon, J. E. R., King, M., & Lockhead, G. R. (1980). On sequential effects in absolute judgment experiments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 6, 290-301. Stevens, S. S. (1975). Psychophysics. New York: Wiley. Stewart, N., Brown, G. D. A., & Chater, N. (in press). Absolute identification by relative judgment. Psychological Review. Stewart, N., Chater, N., & Brown, G.D.A. (2005). Decision by sampling. Manuscript submitted for publication. Treisman, M. (1985). The magical number seven and some other features of category scaling: Properties for a model of absolute judgment. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 29, 175-230. Treisman, M., & Williams, T. C. (1984). A theory of criterion setting with an application to sequential dependencies. Psychological Review, 91, 68-111. Volkmann, J. (1951). Scales of judgment and their implications for social psychology. In J. H. Rohrer and M. Sherif (Eds.), Social psychology at the crossroads (pp. 279-294). New York: Harper & Row. Ward, L. M., & Lockhead, G. R. (1970). Sequential effects and memory in category judgment. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 84, 27-34. Ward, L. M., & Lockhead, G. R. (1971). Response system processes in absolute judgment. Perception & Psychophysics, 9, 73-78. Wearden, J. H. (1991). Human performance on an analogue of the interval bisection task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 43B, 59-81. Wearden, J. H. (1992). Temporal generalization in humans. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 18, 134-144. Wearden, J. H. (1995). Categorical scaling of stimulus duration by humans. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavioral Processes, 21, 318-330. Wearden, J. H., & Bray, S. (2001). Scalar timing without reference memory? Episodic temporal generalization and bisection in humans. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54B, 289-309. Wearden, J. H., & Ferrara, A. (1995). Stimulus spacing effects in temporal bisection by humans. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 48B, 289-310. Wearden, J. H., & Ferrara, A. (1996). Stimulus range effects in temporal bisection by humans. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49B, 24-44. Wearden, J. H., Rogers, P., & Thomas, R. (1997). Temporal bisection in humans with longer stimulus durations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 50B, 79- 94.
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/602