On Optimality and Human Prediction of Event Duration in Real-Time, Real-World Contexts

Abstract

The focus of the current work concerned the psychological processes that underlie prediction of an events duration. The objective was to push forward existing psychological theory on event duration prediction, something made possible by the unique features of our data context. The provisional findings suggested that the prior, existing theoretical mechanism of event duration prediction is incomplete because: i. it does not support adaptive responses when event duration judgments are dependent, ii. it does not afford the integration of new, on the fly, information. Our findings suggest specific directions for future research.