Abstract
Junior high school students (N=74) viewed CRT displays of two cars traveling in the same direction, for particular durations and distances. Participants judged which car ran for a longer time or distance, as pairs of cars were depicted in 13 different combinations. Each car moved as soon as it appeared, and disappeared as soon as it stopped, thereby equalizing spatial cues and temporal cues. In addition, two types of scenes were depicted. In the first type (track condition) the two cars ran on parallel tracks of the same length, and in the second condition (no-track condition), there were no tracks. The results were as follows. First, in the track condition, duration judgements were more difficult than distance judgements, while in the no-track condition both judgements were of approximately the same difficulty. Second, in the track condition, spatial stopping points affected error rates much more than did temporal stopping points, while in the no-track condition both effects were approximately equal.
