Mental timing and the central attentional bottleneck

Ruthruff, Eric; Pashler, Harold · 2010 · Unknown

DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199563456.003.0009

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Summary

This chapter evaluates whether mental timing is subject to a central attentional bottleneck, a processing constraint that prevents concurrent execution of central cognitive operations. While previous research established that divided attention impairs time estimation, those studies often used continuous concurrent tasks that confounded mental load with resource competition. The authors aim to distinguish between a resource-sharing model, where timing degrades due to reduced capacity, and a discrete bottleneck model, where timing is entirely postponed until central operations for a concurrent task are complete. To test this, the authors employed dual-task paradigms involving a speeded brightness discrimination (Task 1) and a timing task (Task 2). In interval production experiments, participants performed the brightness discrimination and then pressed a key after a target duration (1.5 seconds). The difficulty of the brightness task was manipulated to vary the time required for central processing. Results showed nearly 100% "carryover": when the brightness task was difficult, the produced time interval increased by the same amount that the brightness response time increased. This indicated that participants did not begin timing until after completing the brightness discrimination, supporting the bottleneck hypothesis for production tasks. Additionally, timing variability decreased in dual-task conditions, consistent with the idea that timing variance was inherited from the shorter, less variable period of timing that occurred after the bottleneck cleared. In interval reproduction experiments, participants estimated the duration of a variable stimulus while performing the brightness discrimination. Here, the results diverged from the production findings. Although difficult brightness tasks led to shorter reproduced intervals (consistent with a bottleneck), the carryover effect was only 22–38% of the effect on the brightness task itself. The authors attribute this partial carryover to regression-to-the-mean, where participants combined noisy trial-specific estimates with a stable estimate of the average stimulus duration. Follow-up experiments with wider duration ranges and more difficult concurrent tasks (mapping alphanumeric stimuli to fingers) confirmed that while timing is affected by concurrent central processing, it is not completely blocked. The findings suggest that mental timing relies on central attentional mechanisms but is not wholly subject to a strict serial bottleneck. In production tasks, timing appears to be postponed until central resources are free, whereas in reproduction tasks, some temporal information is processed concurrently, albeit imperfectly. This distinction clarifies the nature of attentional limitations in time perception, indicating that the central bottleneck affects the precision and strategy of timing rather than rendering it impossible during concurrent cognitive load.

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• time perception