Attentional resources in timing: interference effects in concurrent temporal and nontemporal working memory tasks

Abstract

Three experiments examined interference effects in concurrent temporal and nontemporal tasks. The timing task in each experiment required subjects to generate a series of 2- or 5-sec temporal productions. The nontemporal tasks were pursuit rotor tracking (Experiment 1), visual search (Experiment 2), and mental arithmetic (Experiment 3). Each nontemporal task had two levels of difficulty. All tasks were performed under both single- and dual-task conditions. A simple attentional allocation model predicts bidirectional interference between concurrent tasks. The main results showed the classic interference effect in timing. That is, the concurrent nontemporal tasks caused temporal productions to become longer (longer productions represent a shortening of perceived time) and/or more variable than did timing-only conditions. In general, the difficult version of each nontemporal task disrupted timing more than the easier version. The timing data also exhibited a serial lengthening effect, in which temporal productions became longer across trials. Nontemporal task performance showed a mixed pattern. Tracking and visual search were essentially unaffected by the addition of a timing task, whereas mental arithmetic was disrupted by concurrent timing. These results call for a modification of the attentional allocation model to incorporate the idea of specialized processing resources. Two major theoretical frameworks--multiple resource theory and the working memory model--are critically evaluated with respect to the resource demands of timing and temporal/nontemporal dual-task performance.