Behavioral Theory of Timing and Poisson Processes

Podcast: Human Factors Minute · Human Factors Cast

Opublikowano: 2026-06-30

The Behavioral Theory of Timing comes to us from Peter Killeen and Gregor Fetterman in 1988. The general idea is that the reinforcement of behaviors generates knowledge of the average amount of time between reinforcement. This knowledge is what sets our internal clock, which then tells us when to perform the behavior. The transitions between behaviors are considered a Poisson Process. A Poisson Process is a probability concept that can be applied to many real-world situations. For something to qualify as a Poisson Process, events must be independent of each other, the average rate of events is constant...