Click trains and the rate of information processing: Does “speeding up” subjective time make other psychological processes run faster?

Jones, LA; Allely, CS; Wearden, JH

Abstract

A series of experiments demonstrated that a 5-s train of clicks that have been shown in previous
studies to increase the subjective duration of tones they precede (in a manner consistent with “speeding
up” timing processes) could also have an effect on information-processing rate. Experiments used
studies of simple and choice reaction time (Experiment 1), or mental arithmetic (Experiment 2). In
general, preceding trials by clicks made response times significantly shorter than those for trials
without clicks, but white noise had no effects on response times. Experiments 3 and 4 investigated
the effects of clicks on performance on memory tasks, using variants of two classic experiments of cognitive psychology: Sperling’s (1960) iconic memory task and Loftus, Johnson, and Shimamura’s
(1985) iconic masking task. In both experiments participants were able to recall or recognize significantly more information from stimuli preceded by clicks than those preceded by silence.

Citation

Jones, L., Allely, C., & Wearden, J. (2011). Click trains and the rate of information processing: Does “speeding up” subjective time make other psychological processes run faster?. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64(2), 363-380. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2010.502580

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Oct 13, 2014
• Journal: The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology
• Print ISSN: 1747-0218
• Electronic ISSN: 1747-0226
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 64
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 363-380
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2010.502580
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2010.502580
• Related Public URLs: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/pqje20#.VDwLzKI0XTo
• Additional Information: Funders : Funder not known