Encoding, storage and judgment of experienced frequency and duration

Abstract

This paper examines conditions that do or do not lead to accurate judgments of frequency (JOF) and judgments of duration (JOD). In three experiments, duration and frequency of visually presented stimuli are varied orthogonally in a within-subjects design. Experiment 1 reveals an asymmetric judgment pattern. JOFs reflected actual presentation frequency quite accurately and were unbiased by exposure duration. Conversely, JODs were almost insensitive to actual exposure duration and were systematically biased by presentation frequency. We show, however, that a tendency towards a symmetric judgment pattern can be obtained by manipulating encoding conditions. Sustaining attention during encoding (Experiment 2) or enhancing richness of the encoded stimuli (Experiment 3) increases judgment sensitivity in JOD and yields biases in both directions (JOF biased by exposure duration, JOD biased by presentation frequency). The implications of these findings for underlying memory mechanisms are discussed.