Causes of Difficulty in Duration Judgments: Comment on Francuz and Oleś (2011)

Abstract

In 2011, Okazaki and Matsuda showed in studies that college students could not correctly estimate the duration of movement of two objects. Fancuz and Oleś (2011) proposed two explanations of the observed task difficulty. First, they suggested that the cause of the difficulty for the duration judgments involved the experimental procedure, which may have overloaded the cognitive capacities of these students. This study presents results that indicate there was no overload. Second, because the training was intended to improve response accuracy, but it failed to significantly increase accuracy rates, Fancuz and Oleś (2011) suggested there was insufficient time for learning about the task. With respect to these results, Fancuz and Oleś (2011) are correct in pointing out that the training duration could be an issue.