Short-term memory in time interval production

Abstract

This article summarizes results from several studies on the effect of nontemporal processing on concurrent time estimation. These studies use an experimental paradigm that was developed to interpolate various nontemporal tasks in time interval production. Produced intervals were specifically lengthened by increasing the amount of short-term memory processing performed in a concurrent search task. The interference was shown with many short-term memory tasks, using various durations and methods in the temporal task. The effect on temporal production seems to be positively related to the level of difficulty of the short-term memory task. Finally, processing item or order information affects simultaneous time produc-tion, whereas its maintenance has no effect. An interference analysis of these phenomena suggests that interruption in time estimation is caused by both temporal and nontemporal tasks simultaneously requiring processing in short-term memory.