Attentional resources in timing: Interference effects in concurrent temporal and nontemporal working memory tasks

Brown, Scott W. · 1997 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.3758/bf03205526

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Summary

This paper investigates the role of attentional resources in time perception, specifically examining interference effects when temporal and nontemporal working memory tasks are performed concurrently. The research is motivated by the "interference effect," a consistent finding in time perception literature where demanding nontemporal tasks shorten perceived time. The study aims to test the attentional allocation model, which posits that temporal and nontemporal tasks compete for a common pool of limited processing resources. A key theoretical question addressed is whether this interference is bidirectional; that is, if nontemporal tasks disrupt timing, does timing also disrupt nontemporal performance? The study comprises three experiments, each employing a prospective timing paradigm where subjects were instructed to judge time. In each experiment, subjects performed a timing task requiring the generation of 2- or 5-second temporal productions via key presses. This was paired with a nontemporal task: pursuit rotor tracking (motor/perceptual) in Experiment 1, visual search (perceptual) in Experiment 2, and mental arithmetic (cognitive) in Experiment 3. Each nontemporal task had easy and difficult versions. Subjects performed these tasks under both single-task (control) and dual-task conditions across multiple trials. This design allowed for the comparison of timing performance with and without distraction, as well as the assessment of nontemporal performance degradation due to concurrent timing. The results confirmed the classic interference effect in timing: concurrent nontemporal tasks caused temporal productions to become longer (indicating shortened perceived time) and more variable compared to timing-only conditions. Greater difficulty in the nontemporal task generally led to greater disruption in timing. Additionally, a serial lengthening effect was observed, where productions became longer across trials. However, the interference was not bidirectional for all tasks. Pursuit rotor tracking and visual search performance were essentially unaffected by the addition of the timing task. In contrast, mental arithmetic performance was significantly disrupted by concurrent timing. These findings challenge the simple attentional allocation model, which predicts mutual interference due to shared resources. The asymmetric results suggest that timing and certain nontemporal tasks may utilize specialized processing resources rather than a single common pool. The paper concludes by evaluating these results against multiple resource theory and the working memory model, arguing for a modification of current theoretical frameworks to account for specialized resource demands in temporal processing.

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Topics

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• time perception
• dual task performance
• dual task multitasking
• temporal
• capacity resource theory