Transfer of Time Judgments as a Function of Feedback

Male college students verbally judged time intervals with or without feedback on the accuracy of their judgments after each trial. Some subjects judged only short intervals (5-10 sec) in both three-block phases, others only long intervals (40-80 sec), and others were switched from short to long intervals or vice versa between phases. Feedback decreased mean absolute error, increasingly so across blocks, and by the fifth block this training transferred for subjects whose range of intervals had changed between phases, more so for a change from long to short intervals than vice versa. These findings and the correlations of absolute error between phases without feedback suggest that different processes may subserve the judgment of short and long intervals.