CODING OF TEMPORAL-ORDER INFORMATION - AN AUTOMATIC PROCESS

This article includes four experiments in which four criteria for testing the automaticity of coding of temporal order information are examined. Results show that memory for temporal order information is affected by intention to learn, competing task loads, encoding strategy, and subjects' age. The results, which generally hold for memory for absolute, as well as for relative temporal order information, do clarify the somewhat mixed pattern of results in previous studies, which was due, at least in part, to inappropriate testing methodologies. Such results, which are similar to recent tests of automaticity of frequency of occurrence and spatial location information, are at odds with the claim made by several researchers that memory for temporal order information is exclusively mediated by automatic processes. The concept of automaticity and the appropriateness of the testing criteria for it are discussed in light of the current results.