Higher Precision of Memory for Time Using Verbal-Numerical Versus Visuospatial Reports.

Abstract

A reliable method for exploring the temporal representation of past events is to assess the time of occurrence of discrete stimuli extracted from the original experience on a horizontal timeline representing the event duration. Previous studies using a visual analog scale (VAS) indicate that temporal judgments about movie segments from a commercial movie can be very precise, even when using long audiovisual material at encoding. This result might reflect the benefit of relying on an explicit visuospatial representation of the encoded material when making temporal judgments. To test this hypothesis, the present study compared the temporal memory performance when human observers reported their judgments using either a visual analog scale or verbal-numerical reports, using both a between-subject and a within-subject design. Participants encoded a ∼90 min movie and the next day provided time-of-occurrence judgments on a series of video clips extracted from the movie. In both the within- and the between-subject design, we observed a higher memory precision in the verbal-numeral compared to the visuospatial VAS condition. The results do not align with the idea of a spatial representational bias for temporal memory judgments and suggest a previously unknown memory facilitation effect when temporal memory is assessed using verbal-numerical reports.