Training Enhances the Interference of Numerosity on Duration Judgement

The interference of magnitudes in different dimensions has been demonstrated previously, but the effect of training in one dimension on judgment of another has yet to be examined. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of training in numerosity judgment on judgment of duration. 32 participants took part in two sessions, 12 days apart, and had to judge which of two successive sets of items was presented longer. Half of the participants (training group) were additionally trained in 11 sessions to judge which one of the two successive sets of items was more numerous. It was found that the participants in the training group became more prone to the interference of numerosity on judging duration after training, when compared to the control group. Thus, being trained to more easily perceive the difference in number of items in the two sets affected the perception of duration. On the 3-month follow up session, no effect was found with 20 participants (n = 10 for each group). These findings indicate that the interference of magnitudes in different dimensions can be modulated by training. We discuss that this modulatory effect might be due to neural changes in shared brain regions between interfering magnitudes and/or is mediated by higher levels of perception.