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(For lists of papers by a particular author, see that person's entry on the page Mari Riess Jones, or Graduate Students.) Jones, M. R. (1976), Time, Our Lost Dimension: Toward a New Theory of Perception, Attention, and Memory. Psychological Review, 83(5), 523 - 355.A theory of perception and attention that emphasizes the relational nature of perceptual invariants is developed within the context of auditory pattern research. The theory is divided into two parts. The first part addresses world pattern structure; the second describes interaction of organisms with pattern structure. In the former, world patterns are subjectively represented as nested relations within a multidimensional space defined by pitch, loudness, and time. But dependency of these defining dimensions means that a pattern's time scale determines the serial integrity of it pitch/loudness structure. Second, the theory proposes a time scale for living things that is manifest in graded perceptual rhythms. These rhythms can be synchronized to corresponding nested time zones within world pattern structure. Related assumptions about the deployment of physical energy across times zones and cognitive locations of perceptual rhythms lead to a simple, but general, attentional theory. Theoretical support, found in research with tone patterns, speech, and sequences of noise is cited in a final section. Beyond this focal research, the theory offers a general framework for understanding diverse phenomena that range from speech perception and aphasia to sleep, growth, and time estimation. Jones, M. R. (1989). Dynamic Attending and Responses to Time. Psychological Review, 96(3), 459 - 491.A temporally based theory of attending is proposed that assumes that the structure of world events affords different attending modes. Future-oriented attending supports anticipatory behaviors and occurs with highly coherent temporal events. Time judgments, given this attending mode, are influence by the way an event's ending confirms or violates temporal expectancies. Analytic attending supports other activities (e.g., grouping, counting), and if it occurs with events of low temporal coherence, then time judgments depend on the attending levels involved. A weighted contrast model describes over- and underestimations of event durations. The model applies to comparative duration judgments of equal and unequal time intervals; its rationale extends to temporal productions/extrapolations. Two experiments compare predictions of the contrast model with those derived from other traditional approaches. Yee, Wm., Holleran, S. & Jones, M. R. (1994). Sensitivity to event timing in regular and irregular sequences: Influences of musical skill. Perception & Psychophysics, 56 , 461 - 471.Two experiments examined performance of listeners with different amounts of musical training (High Skill, Low Skill) in a two alternative forced choice (2AFC) time detection task involving simple five-cycle acoustic sequences. All listeners determined which of two pattern cycles contained a small time change on each of a series of trials. Sequence context was also varied (Regular versus Irregular timing). In Experiment 1, where context was manipulated as a between-subjects variable, High Skilled listeners performed significantly better than Low Skill listeners only with regular patterns. In Experiment 2, where context was manipulated as a within-subjects variable, the only significant source of variance was pattern context: All listeners were better detecting time changes in regular than in irregular patterns. Results are considered in light of several hypotheses, including the Expectancy/Contrast model (Jones & Boltz, 1989).Klein, J. M. & Jones, M. R. (1996). Effects of attentional set and rhythmic complexity on attending. Perception & Psychophysics, 58, 34-46.In a target detection task involving sustained attentional monitoring, rhythmic properties of tone sequences were found to affect detection performance (ROC Area, A) and reaction times. Alternating tone frequencies (high, low) formed three different recurrent rhythms (binary, trinary, mixed) which varied in complexity. Attentional set was also manipulated such that participants either attended to tones of both frequencies (divided) or only to the higher of the two tones (selective). The most interesting finding involved an interaction between attentional set and rhythm, indicating that selective attending is enhanced by the most complex (mixed) rhythm, while divided attending tends to be best with the simplest rhythm (binary). Results are discussed in terms of a theory of dynamic attending which assumes that listeners actively use attending oscillators to direct attending. Jones, M. R. & Yee, W. (1997). Sensitivity to Time Change: The role of context and skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. 23, 693-709.Three experiments used a two alternative forced choice procedure to examine the performance of skilled (musicians) and unskilled (nonmusicians) listeners in detecting small time changes embedded within the test cycles of rhythmical patterns having different relational and statistical properties. Magnitude of time change and rate were also varied in Experiments 1 and 2; session context was manipulated in Experiment 3. In all experiments, listeners were better with regular than irregular patterns in spite of the fact that the regular patterns were the more variable; in addition musicians were superior to nonmusicians only with regular sequences. In Experiment 3, more marked effects of relational structure both within patterns and sessions were evident. Results were interpreted in favor of an oscillator model of dynamic attending.Jones, M. R. & Pfordresher, P. (1997) Tracking musical patterns using Joint Accent Structure. Canadian Journal of Psychology. 51, 271-290.Joint Accent Structure (JAS) is a construct that uses temporal relationships between different accents in a melodic pattern as indices of its complexity. Concordant patterns are ones in which the periodic recurrence of melodic accents form simple ratios with the period of temporal accents (E.g., 1:1, 1:2), whereas Discordant patterns have periods of melodic and temporal accents with a more complex accent period ratio (e.g., 3:2). Participants were told to selectively attend to and synchronize finger taps with accents in two experiments that examined attentional tracking to music patters having a "concordant" or "discordant" JAS. Results indicated that tapping was more variable with discordant than with concordant JAS patterns, both with respect to produced inter-accent time periods and with respect to the phase of taps relative to accent onsets. These findings are interpreted in terms of real time attending and its control by event time structure.Large, E. W. & Jones, M. R. (1999) The dynamics of attending: How we track time-varying events. Psychological Review , 106, 119-159.A theory of attentional dynamics is proposed and aimed at explaining how listeners respond to systematic change in everyday events while retaining a general sense of their rhythmic structure. The approach describes attending as the behavior of internal oscillations, called attending rhythms, that are capable of entraining to external events and targeting attentional energy to expected points in time. A mathematical formulation of the theory describes internal oscillations that focus pulses of attending energy and interact in various ways to enable attentional tracking of events with complex rhythms. This approach provides reliable predictions about the role of attending to event time structure in rhythmical events that modulate in rate, as demonstrated in 3 listening experiments. Drake, C., Jones, M. R. & Baruch, C. (2000) The development of rhythmic attending in auditory sequences: attunement, referent period, focal attending. Cognition, 77, 251-288.This paper is divided into three sections. The first section is theoretical; it extends Dynamic Attending Theory (Jones, 1976; 1987; 1990; Jones & Boltz, 1989) to developmental questions concerning tempo and time hierarchies. Generally Dynamic Attending Theory proposes that, when listening to a complex auditory sequence, listeners spontaneously focus on events occurring at an intermediate rate (the referent level), and they then may shift attention to events occurring over longer or shorter time spans, that is at lower (faster) or higher (slower) hierarchical levels (focal attending). The second section of the paper is experimental. It examines maturational changes of three dynamic attending activities involving referent period and level, attunement, and focal attending. Tasks include both motor tapping (including spontaneous motor tempo and synchronization with simple sequences and music) and tempo discrimination. We compare performance by 4-, 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children and adults, with or without musical training. Results indicate three changes with increased age and musical training: 1) a slowing of the mean spontaneous tapping rate (a reflection of the referent period) and mean synchronization rate (a reflection of the referent level), 2) enhanced ability to synchronize tapping and discriminate tempo (improved attunement), and 3) enlarged range of tapping rates towards slower rates and higher hierarchical levels (improved focal attending). A final section considers results in light of the theory proposed here. It is suggested that growth trends can be expressed in terms of listeners' engagement of slower attending oscillators with age and experience, accompanied by the passage from the initial use of a single oscillator towards the coupling of multiple oscillators. Jones, M. R., Moynihan, H., MacKenzie, N., and Puente, J. (2002) Temporal Aspects of Stimulus-Driven Attending in Dynamic Arrays. Psychological Science.Auditory sequences of tones are used to examine a form of stimulus-driven attending involving temporal expectancies that is influenced by stimulus rhythm. Three experiments examined the influence of sequence timing on comparative pitch judgments of two tones (standard, comparison) separated by interpolated pitches. In some experiments interpolated tones were regularly times, with onset times of comparison tones varied relative to this rhythm. Listeners were most accurate judging the pitch of rhythmically expected tones and least accurate with very unexpected ones. This effect persisted over time, but disappeared when the rhythm of interpolated tones was either missing or irregular. [full text] |