The Role Of Central Executive Sub-functions In Prospective Duration Judgment

Time is a fundamental property of matter. Duration judgment is of great significance forhuman beings to survive and adapt to environments. Extended resource allocation model ofduration judgment considers that duration judgment primarily depends on attentional andworking memory resources. The demonstration bidirectional interference effect betweenduration judgment and non-temporal task that associated with executive processes indual-task paradigm of time and non-time provide support for that duration judgment isaffected by central executive function. Miyake et al.(2002) identified three relativelyindependent sun-functions of central executive function, which they termed “switching”,“inhibition” and “updating”. Switching involves shifting attention back and forth betweenmultiple tasks or cognitive operations. Inhibition is a basic executive control process thatincludes suppressing dominant, automatic responses and resisting distractions. Updatingrefers to updating information in working memory contents by people as needed. Whenappropriate, information that is no longer current or relevant is replaced with newerinformation. Researches abroad on the relationship between duration judgment and centralexecutive function show that the effects of different central executive sub-functions onduration judgment are not the same. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore therelationship between different executive sub-functions and duration judgment, and furtherinvestigate the extent of the impact of executive sub-functions on duration judgment.The two experiments of this study both included three executive function tasks and twodifferent lengths of perspective duration judgment tasks. The three executive tasks whichrepresented shifting (Local-Global task), inhibition (Stroop task), updating (n-back task)functions was considered to well reflect level of each sub-function in previous studies,respectively. Perspective duration judgment tasks included2s and5s duration productiontasks.In the first experiment, the interference effect between executive sub-functions andduration production tasks was discussed in dual-task paradigm. Each group of participants needed to perform two single-task trials which consisted of duration production alone andexecutive sub-function task alone, and a dual-task trial in which participants were instructedto complete two tasks at the same time. By comparing the performance of executivesub-function task and duration production task between single-task trial and dual-task trial,we found bidirectional interference between three executive sub-function tasks and durationproduction tasks (2s&5s). This outcome suggested three executive sub-functions (switching,inhibition,&updating) and perceptive duration judgment might depend on the same set ofexecutive resources, respectively.In experiment2, we adopted within subjects design that all subjects were instructed tofinish three executive sub-function tasks and two duration production tasks. Experimentaldata were submitted to structural equation modeling. The result showed that the accuracy ofperceptive duration judgment was primarily moderated by updating, while the variability ofperceptive duration judgment was moderated by updating in short duration condition and byinhibition in long duration condition. Perceptive duration judgment was not affected byswitching.In summary, the effects of three executive sub-functions on perceptive duration judgmentin short-duration and long-duration conditions were different. Perceptive duration judgmentwas moderated by updating in short duration condition and by inhibition and updating in longduration condition. The outcome of this study also supported “different” mechanismhypothesis of duration judgment.