Time and the Dynamic Control of Behavior

In what ways does time influence and control our behaviour? This is the fundamental question at the heart of this book. In both everyday life and in the workplace, we are constantly confronted with dynamic situations (i.e., ones that change over time). Obvious examples include driving an automobile or controlling industrial machinery. This book aims to achieve an integrated view of how people adjust to the constantly evolving world around them. The multidisciplinary approach taken here is based on both laboratory and field research, in such disciplines as time and work psychology, computer science, and ergonomics, and focuses not only on the underlying mental structures and processes, but also on the processes themselves and how individuals can control dynamic situations. It is divided into three main sections. The first of which is time estimation in humans and animals, including discussions of models of timing, attentional resource sharing and knowledge-based models. The second section is concerned with the dynamic interfaces that people must control, models of these interfaces and control tasks (such as anticipation and coordination). The final section is concerned with mental representations of dynamic and temporal information. The text should be of interest to all those working in the areas of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology and ergonomics as it provides broad coverage of the topic of time and how it controls behaviour, integrating recent findings from both applied and basic research.

Table of Contents:
Time estimation: mechanisms underlying timing abilities in animals - steady-states and dynamic situations; exploring scalar timing theory with human subjects; reponse latencies in temporal bisection - implications for timing models; brain correlates of time processing; motor programming of time - electrophysiological data in humans; what changes in rhythmic performances with ageing?; the relationship between internal and external determinants of time estimation behaviour; new perspective on prospective time estimation; parallel estimation of short duration in humans; duration reproduction of meaningful events - a matter of expectancy, counter/accumulator and attention allocation processe; adaptation to duration in preschool children. Dynamic interfaces: on the representation of change; the impact of time and risk on the design of human computer interfaces; regular temporal structures and their computer simulation - the RAFT simulator; temporal relations in a dynamic process - the content effect of mimmic displays; anticipatory behaviour in a simulated bus traffic control task; temporal landmarks to manage time in dynamic situations. Mental representations of dynamic and temporal information: dynamic perception of dynamics - object and event perception across saccadic eye movements; temporal deductive reasoning; mental models and working memory in temoral reasoning and spatial reasoning.