Contribution of Stimulus Attributes to Errors in Duration and Distance Judgments—A Developmental Study

Abstract

In Matsuda's 1996 study, 4- to 11-yr.-old children (N = 133) watched two cars running on two parallel tracks on a CRT display and judged whether their durations and distances were equal and, if not, which was larger. In the present paper, the relative contributions of the four critical stimulus attributes (whether temporal starting points, temporal stopping points, spatial starting points, and spatial stopping points were the same or different between two cars) to the production of errors were quantitatively estimated based on the data for rates of errors obtained by Matsuda. The present analyses made it possible not only to understand numerically the findings about qualitative characteristics of the critical attributes described by Matsuda, but also to add more detailed findings about them.