According to the hypothesis of a scalar property for time, the variability to time ratio should be constant. Three experiments tested the validity of this hypothesis in a restricted range of durations (standard values = 1, 1.3, 1.6, and 1.9 s). In each experiment, time intervals to be discriminated, reproduced, or categorized were presented with…

This study investigates the effects of successive and simultaneous information presentation methods on learner's visual search ability and working memory load for different information densities. Since the processing of information in the brain depends on the capacity of visual short-term memory (VSTM), the limited information processing capacity…

People are able to use temporal cues to anticipate the timing of an event, enabling them to process that event more efficiently. We conducted two experiments, using the fixed-foreperiod paradigm (Experiment 1) and the temporal-cueing paradigm (Experiment 2), to assess which components of information processing are speeded when subjects use such…

Comparison is one of the most ubiquitous and versatile mechanisms in human information processing. Previous research demonstrates that one consequence of comparative thinking is increased judgmental efficiency: Comparison allows for quicker judgments without a loss in accuracy. We hypothesised that a second potential consequence of comparative…

Groups typically have difficulties drawing inferences that integrate individuals' unique information (collaborative inferences) and thus yield a true assembly bonus. An experiment with 36 dyads of university-level students in four training conditions showed, particularly in untrained dyads, that collaborative inferences were less likely to be…

There is considerable debate about whether differential delay eyeblink conditioning can be acquired without awareness of the stimulus contingencies. Previous investigations of the relationship between differential-delay eyeblink conditioning and awareness of the stimulus contingencies have assessed awareness after the conditioning session was…

The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break,…

Six experiments investigated how changes in stimulus speed influence subjective duration. Participants saw rotating or translating shapes in three conditions: constant speed, accelerating motion, and decelerating motion. The distance moved and average speed were the same in all three conditions. In temporal judgment tasks, the constant-speed…

Stimulus over-selectivity refers to behavior being controlled by one element of the environment at the expense of other equally salient aspects of the environment. This is a common problem for many individuals, including those with autism spectrum disorders, and learning difficulties, and presents a considerable problem for information processing…

Aggression in young people has been associated with a bias toward attributing hostile intent to others. However, little is known about the origin of biased social information processing. The current study explored the potential role of peer contagion in the emergence of hostile attribution in adolescents. One hundred thirty-four adolescents (M age…

Forgetting what one was doing prior to interruption is an everyday problem. The recent soft constraints hypothesis (Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, 2006) emphasizes the strategic adaptation of information processing strategy to the task environment. It predicts that increasing information access cost (IAC: the time, and physical and mental effort…

The superiority of learner-paced over system-paced instructions was demonstrated in multiple experiments. In these experiments, the system-paced presentations were highly speeded, causing cognitive overload, while the learner-paced instructions allowed adjustments of the presentational flow to the learner's needs by pacing facilities, mostly…

Conflict adaptation effects refer to the reduction of interference when the incongruent stimulus occurs immediately after an incongruent trial, compared with when it occurs after a congruent trial. The present study analyzes the key conditions that lead to adaptation effects that are specific to the type of conflict involved versus those that are…

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated a potential interaction involving the processing of concurrent feedback using design features from the specificity of practice literature and the processing of terminal feedback using a manipulation from the guidance hypothesis literature. In Experiment 1, participants produced (198 trials)…

In this study, the authors combined the cross-modal dynamic capture task (involving the horizontal apparent movement of visual and auditory stimuli) with spatial cuing in the vertical dimension to investigate the role of spatial attention in cross-modal interactions during motion perception. Spatial attention was manipulated endogenously, either…