This research was designed to compare time judgments obtained under prospective conditions (in which subjects are instructed to attend to time) and retrospective conditions (in which subjects are unaware that they will be required to judge time). In Experiment 1, subjects prospectively or retrospectively judged the duration of intervals spent performing a perceptual-motor task at different levels of difficulty. The results showed that subjects tested under both research paradigms tended to give increasingly shorter and/or more inaccurate time judgments with increases in nontemporal task demands. Experiment 2 was designed to test the effects of attentional deployment on perceived time by comparing prospective and retrospective judgments under control, selective attention, and divided attention conditions. Both types of time judgments became increasingly inaccurate as attention was more broadly deployed. The results of these experiments are consistent with an attentional allocation model, and they suggest that nontemporal task demands disrupt or interfere with timing in both prospective and retrospective situations.

/pdf/time-perception-and-attention-the-effects-of-prospective-2d98m2sidb.pdf

Time perception and attention: The effects of prospective versus retrospective paradigms and task demands on perceived duration

The subjects, 120 college students, sorted cards for 42 sec with instructions to process 0, 1, or 2 bits of information per card (response uncertainty) and then were asked to make an absolute judgement of the interval's duration. Half of the subjects knew this judgement would be required before the interval (prospective paradigm); half did not (retrospective paradigm). Judged time was an inverse linear function of response uncertainty under the prospective paradigm, whereas no significant function was obtained under the retrospective paradigm.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1421469

Prospective and retrospective judgments of time as a function of amount of information processed.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses subjective time and attentional resource allocation. A convenient paradigm widely used to study time estimation processes involves manipulating the level of information processing load during an interval and measuring the resulting changes in the length of its duration estimation. Ornstein introduces the storage-size metaphor to explain the time estimation process. According to this model, the higher the complexity of a stimulus, the higher is the subjective estimate of the duration of its exposure. This follows from the assumption that storage size, on which time estimation is based, is larger for a complex stimulus than for a simple one. Attentional models are the one in which the judged duration is a direct function of the amount of attention allocated to the passage of time. It is assumed that a cognitive unit (a timer or counter), exists, whose purpose it is to process and encode temporal information. This counter, however, demands attentional resources for its operation.

Chapter 10 Subjective Time and Attentional Resource Allocation: An Integrated Model of Time Estimation

Two experiments used levels-of-processing tasks to investigate hypotheses on remembered duration of relatively long intervals. In Experiment 1, level of processing (shallow or deep) of presented information did not affect remembered duration, even though it had a substantial effect on memory for individual stimulus events. In Experiment 2, an interval containing different kinds of tasks (both shallow and deep processing) was remembered as being longer than one containing a single kind of task (either shallow or deep processing). Current formulations of event-memory, attentional, and informational hypotheses on remembered duration cannot easily explain these findings. However, the findings are consistent with a contextual-change hypothesis, which emphasizes memory for the overall amount of change in cognitive context during an interval. Implications regarding contextual factors in memory are discussed.

/pdf/remembered-duration-evidence-for-a-contextual-change-9xgjywhof8.pdf

Remembered duration: Evidence for a contextual-change hypothesis.

Ninety-six subjects were asked to estimate durations of either “empty” or “filled” intervals during which they performed verbal tasks at three levels of difficulty. The verbal tasks were performed under three conditions of external rhythmic stimulation: fast, slow, and no external tempo. It was found that subjective time estimations were a decreasing function of task difficulty, and that durations for “empty” intervals were estimated to be longer than those for “filled” intervals. A relationship between external tempo and subjective time estimation was found. Longest time estimates were obtained under fast external tempo, and shortest time estimates were obtained under slow external tempo. Time estimates under the condition of no external tempo were found to be intermediate. The findings were interpreted as supporting a cognitive timer model of subjective time estimation.

/pdf/the-influence-of-task-difficulty-and-external-tempo-on-51bvzvqoms.pdf

P.A. Vroon

Papers

Effects of presented and processed information on duration experience