Immediate reproduction of temporal information under four cognitive strategies

The main purpose was to determine the retention characteristics of temporal information when subjects experienced time under a retention interval of immediate reproduction and various cognitive strategies for time estimation. Four levels of cognitive strategy were used, viz., conscious, mental counting, counting aloud without auditory cues, and counting aloud with auditory cues. The latter three cognitive strategies were experimenter-defined, time-aiding techniques. Subjects were instructed to refrain from employing time-aiding techniques under a conscious cognitive strategy for time estimation. Visual durations of 1, 2, and 4 sec. were estimated by 12 subjects under the method of reproduction. Two measures of performance were computed, viz., variable and constant errors. The general conclusions were: (a) the effectiveness of mental counting, counting aloud without auditory cues, and counting aloud with auditory cues as cognitive strategies over conscious cognitive strategy in terms of variability depends on the duration used, and (b) in terms of accuracy and variability an increase in the number of cues under time-aiding techniques does not necessarily produce better performance.