Time versus items in judgment of recency.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Memory
• Recency Effects

Background:

• The numerical judgment of recency (JOR) task assesses participants' ability to estimate the number of intervening items since a target's last presentation.
• Existing research suggests JOR may rely on either the temporal duration or the item count since memory retrieval.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the basis of numerical judgment of recency (JOR) is primarily determined by the age of the memory (time) or the quantity of intervening items.
• To differentiate between temporal and item-based accounts of recency judgments in human memory.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments utilized a long list of items presented in alternating fast and slow blocks.
• The block structure was obscured by probabilistic variation in intertrial interval durations (short or long).
• Participants performed the numerical judgment of recency (JOR) task throughout the experiments.

Main Results:

• Judgment of recency (JOR) was found to be a straightforward function of elapsed time.
• The number of intervening items did not contribute significantly or additively to the recency judgment.
• Results consistently indicated that temporal factors, not item counts, drive recency estimations.

Conclusions:

• The findings strongly support a time-based model for numerical judgment of recency (JOR).
• Temporal duration is the primary determinant of recency judgments, overriding the influence of intervening item counts.
• This research clarifies the underlying mechanisms of memory recency estimation in cognitive tasks.