Mental Representation Of Retrospective Duration Estimation:A Study Of Short-term Perspective

Memory is a vital component of retrospective duration estimation,which is either assessed by the interval between two successive events,or the duration of an event after it has ended.The duration estimation of ‘unknowing beforehand,knowing afterwards' has the characteristics of unconscious encoding and conscious retrieval.This phenomenon is very common in daily life.It can be used as a clinical index to evaluate the memory or executive function of abnormal groups(such as Alzheimer's disease and Korsakoff's syndrome),and it has an important guiding role in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in the process of case investigation.So far,little is known about the mental mechanism of retrospective duration estimation.Early research focused on the retrospective duration estimation of public news events or autobiographical memory events,focusing on the long interval research,such as day,month and year.It is found that the retrospective duration estimation is an unstable process of rebuilding the time memory.It is inferred by using the retrieval cues of temporal landmarks(such as events with clear time identification,such as first-time events,flash memory,etc.).It is noteworthy that the ‘unknowing beforehand,knowing afterwards' feature of retrospective duration estimation inevitably mixes with the consciousness of duration information encoding for such a long target time-distance.For example,in the time range of the day level,people will be aware of the length of a certain period of time through the body's hunger or exhaustion state,which is entirely possible to apply to the encoding phase of the duration information.Studies have clearly pointed out that for short time intervals in seconds and minutes,only when the subject need not complete the task and feel bored,they will realize the time.In general,the retrospective duration estimation requires subject to perform non-temporal tasks,hence the short time interval information encoding in the seconds and minutes is unconscious.So,does the conclusion in the long-term range apply to short time intervals? It is doubtful.Retrospective duration estimation involves the time range of seconds,minutes,hours,days,weeks,months,years,and so on.The range-synthetic model of time cognition proposed by the academic team led by Chinese psychologist Huang Xiting believes that such a span of time interval should be segmented and the past psychological structure should be divided into three psychological time periods.Specifically,in the past,the short time interval is divided into two time units(i.e.,seconds and minutes);the near past is measured in hours,days,and months;the farther past is measured in years or longer.It can be obtained that the psychological representation of the long-term and short-term retrospective duration estimation may be different.In addition,the range synthetic model of temporal cognition also believes that human beings for each kind of duration cognition is comprehensive.The perception of time is affected by many factors,including the physical properties(such as the modality characteristics,the number of events and the structure,temporal order,etc),the cognitive characteristics of the individuals(such as attention resources,encoding,segmentation and extraction strategy and working memory),individual personality(such as personality types,impulsive personality,types of self construal and time beliefs)etc.That is to say,the perception of time interval is not simply influenced by a single timing mechanism,and the processing mechanism of time cognition can be explored from various angles.It can be seen that the short-term retrospective duration estimation is also affected by many factors above.The encoding and retrieval strategies may play a major role,which needs to be systematically explored.Therefore,the present study is based on the range-synthetic model of time cognition,with the information processing perspective as the entry point.Starting from the essence of retrospective duration estimation,we focus on the process of encoding and retrieval duation information in seconds and minute range,systematically exploring the mental representation of retrospective duration estimation,and trying to answer to the form mechanism of retrospective duration estimation.The present study intends to systematically explored the mental representation of retrospective duration estimation within a short term using three studies and seven experiments.The details are as follows.Compared to the prospective duration estimation,using the target duration in the range of 6s to 5min respectively,study1 explored the encoding characteristics of retrospective duration estimation in the perceptual and motor tasks,including three experiment.Specifically,experiment 1a focused on exploring the encoding characteristics of retrospective duration estimation,which the subjects were required to estimate the time interval immediately after the material was presented,and found that compared with the VII prospective duration estimation,retrospective duration estimation was underestimated.Experiment 1b adds a delay group based on Experiment 1a,and the encoding characteristics of the duration estimation under the immediate and delayed conditions in the retrospective and prospective duration estimation are emphasized.The results showed that it is estimated that the delay overestimation phenomenon only occurs in percpetual tasks with the longer time range rather than the shorter time interval.In experiment 2,the target duration(1-5 minutes)in different ranges and motor tasks,the video which contained action of snow sweeping viewed from the first perspective and the actual operation of the origami task,were used to compare the retrospective and prospective duration estimation from immediate and delay perspectives in order to explore the encoding characteristics of retrospective duration estimation.The results showed that compared with prospective duration estimation,the retrospective duration estimation was underestimated and had larger variability.With the passage of time,the retrospective duration estimation resulted in overestimation of delay.This encoding feature only occurred in the motor tasks with shorter duration rather than longer in the minute range.In experiment 3,target duration(1-5 minutes)was used to focus on motor tasks(such as Wood Block Huarong Road or Rubik Cube game)and perceptual tasks(such as document materials)with comparison to prospective duration estimation,the impact of task type and target duration on retrospective duration estimation was explored.The results showed that both target duration and task type played an important role in retrospective and prospective duration estimation,and effect size of retrospective one was slightly lower than prospective duration estimation,which may be caused by the unconscious encoding of retrospective duration information.The important discovery of this study is that the unconscious encoding of duration information may be the main reason why the retrospective duration estimation is different from the prospective duration estimation,and the encoding process is closely related to the target duration and task type,which together reflect the mental representation of the retrospective duration estimation.Study 2,based on study 1,further explored how retrospective duration estimation encoded time information,that is,manipulating target time intervals(seconds and minutes)and task types(perceptual and motor),and indirectly exploring the mental representation of retrospective duration estimation,i.e.whether there were semantic and image encoding.it consisted of one survey and two experiments.Survey 4 initially explored the possibility of semantic and image encoding in retrospective duration estimation with a semi-open questionnaire.It was found that the encoding form of the retrospective duration estimation was mostly based on the task type.For example,the semantic and image encoding may exist in the perceptual task,while the motor task may be mainly based on the image encoding.In Experiment 5 and 6 were used to explore the ecoding form of retrospective duration estimation in short-term range of perceptual and motor tasks indirectly with two experimental paradigms(concurrent selective-interference method and forward-backward order contrast task).The results showed that image encoding was dominant in the shorter seconds of perceptual tasks(experiment 5a and 6a)and the longer minutes of action tasks(experiment 5b and experiment 6b).This fully showed that the encoding of retrospective duration information was not equivalent to the semantic and image encoding of task type,but closely related to the target duration.It was embodied as a longer time interval in the range of seconds in the perceptual task and a shorter time interval in the range of minutes in motor task,reflecting the dual encoding of imagery and semantics;the shorter time interval with seconds in perceptual task and a longer time interval with minutes in motor task were mainly based on image encoding.In study 3,the content analysis method of qualitative research was used to analyze the connotation and classifications of duration estimation strategies collected in Study 1 and study 2,and to further verify the mental representation of retrospective duration estimation.Open survey 7a explored the connotation of retrieval strategy in retrospective duration estimation,and compared it with the prospective duration estimation.The results showed that the two both duration estimation strategies could be explored from stimulation,environment and individual aspects,including ten categories.They are organically integrated and closely linked.Moreover,the retrospective and prospective duration estimation strategies have the characteristics of availability rather than recollectability.Based on the principle of encoding specificity,open survey 7b focused on the minimum encoding unit of time,and explored whether the existence of semantics or image encoding in retrospective duration estimation from the category analysis of duration estimation strategy.It was found that target interval in the range of seconds and a shorter time interval in the range of minutes,reflected the dual encoding of imagery and semantics;and a longer time interval with minutes were mainly based on image encoding.In summary,the study found that:(1)The encoding stage of retrospective duration estimation may consist of two parts: unconscious encoding in the stage of ‘unknowing beforehand' and conscious ‘re-encoding' in the stage of ‘knowing afterwards',which is essentially a ‘quasi-encoding' process.The quasi-encoding maybe a retrieval strategy.(2)The quasi-encoding of the retrospective duration estimation mainly includes two IX encoding forms: semantics and images,which are influenced by both target duration and task type.It is shown that the longer interval in motor tasks is mainly represented by images;The target duration in second range of perceptual tasks and the shorter timedistance in motor tasks embodies the double coding of images and semantics,which the proportion is quite.(3)Compared with the prospective duration estimation,the retrospective duration estimation shows the characteristics of underestimation and larger variability;There will be a phenomenon of time length extension over time.This encoding feature only occurs in perceptual tasks with longer time intervals in the second range and in motor tasks with shorter time intervals.It may be embodied in the dual encoding of semantics and images.(4)The retrieval stage of retrospective duration estimation is affected by many factors,among which the quasi-encoding and retrieval strategy of time-range information may play an important role.People can use a variety of retrieval strategies for retrospective duration estimation,in which the strategy of individual ability,experience and number of stimulus accounts for a large proportion.They are characterized by availability.Based on the existing research and combined with the conclusions of the present study,this paper tentatively proposed the two-stage model of retrospective duration estimation,including the encoding stage of ‘unknowing beforehand' and the retrieval stage of ‘knowing afterwards'.The encoding stage of retrospective duration estimation is not a concern for time information,and the exploration of this stage is mainly given by the research data in the retrieval stage.The report data of the participants in the retrieval stage show that the encoded event stimulus in retrospective duration estimation is transformed into time information for expression,which needs to be inferred by the retrieval strategy.It can be seen that the retrieval stage plays a leading role in this model.It is undeniable that the factors such as the vividness of the event stimulus or the individual's memory ability also play an important role in the encoding phase.Because time can not exist separately from events,the encoding of time is transformed by event encoding.Therefore,it is suggested that when subjects perform non-time tasks in the stage of ‘unknowing beforehand',they seem to encode time,which is called quasi-encoding.This encoding reacts to the event stimulus in the retrieval stage of ‘knowing afterwards',which may be a conscious ‘re-encoding' process.The quasi-encoding can include two forms: semantics and images.And the three aspects of the stimulus,the individual and the environment in the retrieval strategy can be explained from the three theoretical models based on memory(i.e.,storage size model,context-change model and change/segment model),which enhances the validity and applicability of the model in the retrospective duration estimation.In short,retrospective duration estimation is closely related to the encoding and retrieval process.It is influenced by the representation of duration information in the encoding process,and the prior knowledge representation of the retrieval strategy.And there is a certain degree of matching between the encoding and retrieval strategies of duration information.This process fully reflects the interaction between the encoding and retrieval phases,and thus affects the accuracy of retrospective duration estimation.Guided by the range-synthetic model of time cognition,the present study focuses on the encoding and retrieval process of retrospective duration estimation among seconds and minutes,and combines qualitative and quantitative research methods to preliminarily explore its mental representation of retrospective duration estimation.Although the two-stage model proposed in present study systematically explores the characteristics of encoding and retrieval stages in retrospective duration estimation,which has a great role in promoting the development of implicit duration estimation,there are still some shortcomings.For example,retrieval strategy is affected by multiple factors,and it is not clear which strategy is the main one in which case.In the future,we need to focus on the two-stage model,focusing on the characteristics and processing way of quasi-encoding.At the same time,we need to explore the neural mechanism of retrospective duration estimation from the perspective of unconscious encoding in order to understand its essence.In short,the psychological phenomenon of ‘unknowing beforehand and knowing afterwards' in the retrospective duration estimation provides ideas and directions for connection consciousness and unconsciousness.It is worthy of active exploration and discovery by more researchers in the future.