Effects of feedback and calibration on the verbal estimation of the duration of tones

Two experiments investigated the effects of feedback (Experiment 1) and calibration (Experiment 2) on verbal estimation of the duration of tones ranging from 77 to 1183 ms in length. In Experiment 1, accurate feedback was provided after half the trials in the feedback condition, and this was contrasted with a no feedback condition in which feedback was absent. In Experiment 2, in the calibration condition, participants estimated the duration of the second of two tones, after a first tone of a known duration (ranging from 50 to 1200 ms) had been presented. In the no calibration condition the value of the first tone was unknown. Compared with conditions without feedback or calibration, the feedback/calibration operation produced no significant change in group mean estimates, nor coefficients of variation of estimates, but the absolute deviation of estimates from the real stimulus duration, and the absolute deviation of individual estimates from the group mean, were both significantly reduced. The feedback/calibration thus made participants’ mean estimates thus more accurate and more similar to one another, but the actual mechanism by which this was done was apparently a subtle process of adjustment, rather than a gross change in mean estimate or estimate variability.