Logo image
Back
Auditory inspection time, sustained attention, and the fundamentality of mental speed
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Auditory inspection time, sustained attention, and the fundamentality of mental speed

P Langsford, B D Mackenzie and Doug P Mahar
Personality and Individual Differences, Vol.16(3), pp.487-497
1994
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(94)90074-4
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(94)90074-4View
Published Version

Abstract

Psychology Cognitive Sciences
Summary-This study investigates two interelated issues: (i) the view that mental speed is a fundamental property of the nervous system by assessing the relationship between inspection time (IT) tasks from two sensory modalities, and (ii) the feasibility of conceptualizing the well-known IT-ability relationship in terms of both IT and ability tasks requiring sustained attention. Subjects (N = 78) undertook a pitch discrimination ability (PDA) task and constant and variable foreperiod (FP) IT tasks representing both auditory (AIT) and visual (VIT) modalities. AIT had little relationship to VIT but a close relationship to PDA, suggesting that the AIT procedure principally measures specific auditory abilities. Also, attentional load was found not to affect the IT-ability relationship, suggesting that sustained attention may not moderate the IT-ability relationship. Results are discussed in terms of the implications of the attentional findings and problems with the currently used AIT task.

Details

Metrics

4 File views/ downloads
876 Record Views
14 Times Cited - Web of Science

InCites Highlights

These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web Of Science research areas
Psychology, Social
Logo image