Task integration in time production

Abstract

). Although this is an artificial laboratory task, it is relevant to everyday activities such as that occurring when a speaker who is delivering a talk needs to be sure to end on time. Unlike situations occurring outside the laboratory, however, arbitrary units of time were used in order to examine the effects of secondary-task demands on training and retention of a new skill, not one previously developed for producing known time intervals such as seconds and minutes. Healy et al. (2005) found circumstances under which performing an irrelevant secondary task simultaneously with time production depressed time production accuracy during training but actually enhanced time production accuracy during testing, relative to performing time production alone. Specifically, participants were trained to perform a prospective time production task, in which they were given a target number of temporal units and, after a beep, were to press the space bar when the given number of temporal units had passed. Half of the participants learned this time production task in isolation, and half learned it while simultaneously performing a difficult alphabet production secondary task, in which they were given a letter cue and were told to count backward through the alphabet by threes (e.g., m j g) until they indicated that the time interval had elapsed. Time production accuracy was much worse with the secondary task than without it during training but improved in both cases over training trials. The level of time production accuracy during subsequent testing depended on whether or not the secondary task was present during training and testing. When the secondary-task requirements were the same during training and testing, there was no loss in performance at test. When the secondary-task requirements were switched between training and testing, primary-task performance suffered at test, so that performance was no better at the start of test than at the start of training in the same condition. This was true even when training involved the difficult secondary task and testing involved no secondary task, despite the fact that the difficult task lowered primary-task performance during training. Thus, performance on time production was actually better when it was performed Task integration in time production University of Colorado, Boulder, ColoradoTwo experiments examined training on a prospective time production task. Participants produced intervals, expressed in fixed arbitrary units, while performing a concurrent secondary task. After a 15-min filled delay, the participants were retrained on the same tasks. These experiments tested whether the primary and secondary tasks would be integrated into a single task. In Experiment 1, the secondary-task requirements were manipulated, but the time production task was fixed. In Experiment 2, the time production task requirements were manipulated, but the secondary task was fixed. The results suggest that participants integrate primary-and secondary-task requirements.

Training specificity and transfer in time and distance estimation

“…However, in previous studies using the time estimation task (e.g., Healy et al, 2005;Wohldmann et al, 2010Wohldmann et al, , 2012, most of the learning occurred in the first block of training trials, so the crucial predicted interaction of secondary-task continuity and phase might only be evident when considering the first block of trials (i.e., a significant three-way interaction of secondary-task continuity, phase, and block might occur). Indeed, as in the earlier studies with this task, we observed a significant interaction of phase and block, reflecting the fact that performance (as measured by proportional absolute error) was much worse in the first block of the first phase than in any other block.…”

“…Wohldmann et al (2010Wohldmann et al ( , 2012 provided evidence that when the time estimation task is coupled with a secondary alphabet task, which can be viewed as a graduated counting task, subjects use the number of letters recited as a way to keep track of the amount of time that has elapsed, thereby combining the primary time estimation task with the secondary alphabet task into a single functional task. Such a strategy would also be possible for the distance estimation task used here, because the line cue grew at a constant rate.…”

“…It is possible that the strong specificity found in that case was an artifact of the time estimation task, because the secondary task filled the time interval being estimated. For example, subjects seemed to integrate the primary time estimation and secondary alphabet recitation tasks into a single functional task by using the number of letters recited as a gauge of how much time had elapsed (see Wohldmann, Healy, & Bourne, 2010.…”

Why are you late? Investigating the role of time management in time-based prospective memory.

“…For instance, previous research has demonstrated that during duration training procedures, younger adults learn to associate progress on an ongoing task with the trained durations. Once duration-task progress associations are learned, participants often use ongoing task progress to inform later time estimates of the same or similar ongoing tasks (e.g., Wohldmann, Healy, & Bourne, 2010; 2012). Perhaps if older adults were required to process the duration relevant information as part of the ongoing task, they might be more likely to utilize memory for this information to make prospective estimates.…”

Specificity and Transfer of Learning

“…We explained the strong specificity observed in this situation by proposing that subjects integrate the time production task and the alphabet task into a single functional task, rather than treat each task separately (see Hsiao & Reber, 2001;Rah, Reber, & Hsiao, 2000;Schmidtke & Heuer, 1997, for similar theoretical conclusions about dual task processing; but also see Ruthruff, Van Selst, Johnston, & Remington, 2006, for a different conclusion). A subsequent study of ours manipulated in separate experiments either the characteristics of the primary time production task or the characteristics of the secondary alphabet task to provide support for this functional task principle (Wohldmann, Healy, & Bourne, 2010). Experiment 1): Equal pacing.…”