Gužvica, Mirna.
(2016).
The effect of nontemporal stimulus magnitude on duration estimations.
Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Psychology.
[mentor Ivanec, Dragutin].
Abstract
Based on observed similarities between the domains of time, space and numbers and indications about the existence of a common processing mechanism for those domains, a theory of magnitude (ATOM) was proposed. The main proposal of that theory is that both countable and uncountable quantities can be represented as mental magnitudes. According to this theory, larger nontemporal stimuli are judged to last longer then smaller nontemporal stimuli of equal duration. Consequently, the main goal of this study was to confirm the existence of the positive effect of nontemporal stimulus magnitude on duration estimations with regard to different types of nontemporal stimuli and different interval durations. Additionally, another goal was to determine whether the studied effect is more pronounced in a repeated measure and whether it is equal across different types of stimuli and different interval durations since this occurrence was observed in previous studies. For this purpose, an experiment, in which a group of 44 participants (29 female and 15 male) had a task to estimate a duration of target intervals using a reproduction method, was conducted. Target intervals consisted of three types of nontemporal stimuli (number, geometric shape and group of dots) each of which was presented in three magnitudes (small, medium and large) and in three different durations (800, 1000 and 1200 ms). Each participant performed the task twice with sessions a week apart from one another. A four-way ANOVA revealed that larger stimuli are estimated to last longer than smaller stimuli of equal duration with the exception of stimuli of medium magnitude. This effect was most pronounced for the group of dots and the least pronounced for numbers which was explained by the appearance of SNARC effect which seemingly lessened the effect of nontemporal stimulus magnitude on duration estimations since most participants, in this study, were right handed. Results also show that the trend of the positive effect of magnitude increases with the increase in interval duration. However, contrary to our expectations, that trend is more pronounced in the first session.
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