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Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2011, 113, 3, 724-726. © Perceptual and Motor Skills 2011
Do UNIVERSITY students really have difficulty in duration judgments? Comment on Okazaki and MaTsuda (2008, 2010)1 Piotr Francuz
Piotr Oleś
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
Warsaw School of Social Psychology and Humanities
Summary.—Reinterpretation suggests that low performance of the participants studied by Okazaki and Matsuda (2008, 2010) may have been caused by using a procedure which overloads the cognitive capacities of undergraduate students. The questions asked participants about their reasoning could have led to cognitive overload because they performed two tasks: judgment of movement duration and paying attention to what kind of knowledge should be used (α or β). Some interpretations are offered referring to possible effects of training procedures for applying both kinds of knowledge.
Piaget (1946) argued that even 8- to 9-year-old children correctly estimate the duration of movement of two objects that are moving at different speeds relative to each other, are traversing different distances, and begin and finish motion at different temporal points. However, the results of Matsuda and colleagues indicate that only about 50% of children ages 9 to 12 years can successfully accomplish these tasks (Matsuda, 1996; Matsuda, Tamimura, & Lan, 2000) and, at most, 80% of undergraduate university students gave correct responses (Okazaki & Matsuda, 2010). Tanimura and Matsuda (2000) and Okazaki and Matsuda (2008) demonstrated that only about 20% of undergraduate students successfully assess the movement durations of two compared objects based on knowledge α (“duration = temporal stopping point – temporal starting point”) and knowledge β (“duration = distance/speed”), and the vast majority of students used only α or duration judgments that were based only on the distance relationship. These results are quite surprising. The cause of relatively low performance of the participants in the studies of Matsuda, et al. is likely the experimental procedure which overloaded their cognitive capacities. The procedure of research reported in Okazaki and Matsuda (2008) consisted of three consecutive sessions: judging, reasoning, and confirming. In the judging session, participants compared the movement durations of two cars that were presented on a CRT monitor. There were nine tasks which differed due to the motion parameters of cars. At the end of the judging session, participants were posed the question: “To what will you pay attention to answer correctly?” Then began the reasoning session, during Address correspondence to Piotr Francuz, Institute of Psychology, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Raclawickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland or e-mail (
[email protected]).
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DOI 10.2466/22.PMS.113.6.724-726
ISSN 0031-5125
DIFFICULTY IN DURATION JUDGMENTS
725
which participants were asked their reasoning for a particular response. In the next session (confirming), previously unsuccessful attempts were repeated. The procedure applied by Okazaki and Matsuda (2008) after the first task could inhibit an increase in accuracy of task performance. The unexpected question—to what will the participant pay attention to answer correctly—and the next reasoning session likely made participants aware that the purpose of this study was not only a comparison of the movement durations, but also monitoring their own mental processes that lead to judgment. In each subsequent task, they may have performed not one, but two cognitive tasks: judgment of movement duration and monitoring their mental processes. If this is the case, then overloading the working memory could suppress both the correctness of the judgment and the accuracy of the description of the mental strategy used for evaluation of movement duration (Baumeister & Muraven, 2000). The undergraduate students studied by Matsuda and her team were most likely not previously trained in monitoring and reporting their mental processes, and so likely struggled to attend to their internal state as they did not have ongoing control of their own mental processes (Schwitzgebel, 2004). Okazaki and Matsuda (2010) attempted to overcome the difficulties mentioned above by introducing two modifications to the previous procedure. First, they did not ask participants about their own strategies of movement duration judgments. Participants were trained on use of knowledge α and β using the method developed by Okazaki and Matsuda (2009). This method, in the form of a booklet, consisted of 41 questions and correct answers for how to use both kinds of knowledge in different tasks. According to the procedure applied by Okazaki and Matsuda (2010), in the first session participants performed nine Piagetian tasks, then followed the planning learning session, i.e., the training of knowledge α and β by using the booklet. During the third session, they again performed the tasks of comparing durations. Unfortunately, it turned out that the applied training did not cause a significant increase in the number of correct judgments of movement duration: before training, the participants gave 77% correct answers and 79% after training. There are two alternative and complementary interpretations, both referring to possible effects of training that allowed the participants to learn the procedures for applying knowledge α and knowledge β. The learning technique may activate declarative and procedural memory. Only activation of procedural memory can cause the expected learning effect. The duration of training is an issue. A single familiarization of the participants with all the questions and answers contained in the booklet is probably too little, so that participants could effectively use knowledge α and knowledge β during performing Piagetian tasks.
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P. Francuz & P. Oleś References
Baumeister, R. F., & Muraven, M. (2000) Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: does self-control resemble a muscle? Psychological Bulletin, 126, 247-259. Matsuda, F. (1996) Duration, distance, and speed judgments of two moving objects by 4- to 11-year-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 63, 286-311. Matsuda, F., Tanimura, R., & Lan, W-C. (2000) Duration and distance judgments of two moving objects by 1st to 6th graders. Current Psychology of Cognition, 19, 575602. Okazaki, Y., & Matsuda, F. (2008) Knowledge and strategies used by adolescents to compare duration of movement by two objects. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 106, 609-626. Okazaki, Y., & Matsuda, F. (2009) [Making judgments of duration: effects of instruction and memory capacity]. [Japanese Journal of Psychology], 80, 138-144. [in Japanese] Okazaki, Y., & Matsuda, F. (2010) Verbal working memory and planning: learning to compare movement durations of objects. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 111, 863-871. Piaget, J. (1946) Le développement de la notion de temps chez l'enfant [Development of time conception in children]. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Schwitzgebel, E. (2004) Introspective training apprehensively defended: reflections on Titchener’s Lab Manual. Journal of Consciousness Study, 11(7-8), 58-76. Tanimura, R., & Matsuda, F. (2000) [Knowledge used in duration judgments of two moving objects]. [Japanese Journal of Psychology], 71, 128-135. [in Japanese] Accepted October 11, 2011.
