Biasing
Time Discriminations in Humans
R.A. Rehfeldt & L.J. Hayes |
Research
has demonstrated that nonhumans can acquire temporal discriminations
across a wide range of durations. Such discriminations are also susceptible
to environmental "biases." Killeen and Fetterman's (1988)
Behavioral Theory of Timing (BeT) contends that rate of reinforcement
biases organisms' temporal discriminations. The present study is
an extension of Morgan, Killeen, and Fetterman (1993) into the domain
of human behavior. Twelve subjects were trained to discriminate between
eight different stimulus durations, and were then exposed to either
a fast bias or a slow bias condition. The bias conditions did not
produce the effects that have been observed with nonhumans, although
some subjects were observed to "bisect" the range of durations
at the geometric mean, as has been found with nonhumans. Several
subjects reported that they counted to assist them in their discriminations.
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