Attention and the Perception of Duration during Encoding and Retrieval

Abstract

Separate groups of subjects spent 50 s encoding a list of nonsense syllables, or a list of unrelated words, or a list of related words, and then 50 s attempting to recall them. On a subsequent assessment of the durations of the encoding and retrieval intervals subjects judged that they had taken more time on retrieval than on encoding, and this difference increased as the meaningfulness of the material decreased. The data were interpreted in terms of an attentional model of time perception, with tasks which demand more attention being judged to occupy more time. By this model retrieval is seen as requiring more attention than does encoding, in accord with recent concurrent task investigations of mnemonic processes.