The Role of Event Time in Attending

Abstract

Two broad categories of dynamic events are introduced: motionlike events and rhythmic events. Of special interest are rhythmic events, the temporal relationships which characterize them and the way people respond to them. The idea of reciprocity as it applies to complementary temporal relationships in events (the perceived) and to a rhythmically sensitive attender (the perceiver) is discussed. It is argued that environmental events in which temporal relationships form simply nested binary time hierarchies (or ones based on smallinteger time ratios) manifest rhythmic properties which allow attenders/perceivers ready attentional entrainment. Findings from an illustrative experiment which considers the way people selectively attend to different kinds of visual event sequences support this argument.