Abstract
Underwood (1975) has used judgments of duration to compare the attentional demands of learning and recall. His study is critically discussed and two further experiments are reported. In experiment 1 subjects spent 50 s learning a list of words and a further 50 s either trying to recall them or learning another list. In contrast to Underwood's subjects both groups judged the first interval to have been longer than the second. In experiment 2 three separate groups of subjects spent 50 s learning a list of items (nonsense syllables, unrelated words, or related words, as in Underwood's experiment) and then a further 50 s trying to recall them. Once again the first interval was judged to have been of greater duration. The implications of these findings for the use of duration judgments as a measure of attentional demand are discussed.