The Perception of Time

Your Questions Answered

Simon Grondin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000762051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Using a concise question and answer format, The Perception of Time: Your Questions Answered examines basic temporal processes and the ways in which our perception of time can be altered.

Divided into three parts, the book provides a contemporary overview of the study of the temporal mind. It begins by introducing the fundamental processes of time perception; how it can be measured, how it can be hindered, and to what extent it can be enhanced. It proceeds to explain how cognitive and psychological disorders, such as schizophrenia, ADHD, and anxiety can be linked to temporal dysfunction, and answers common questions that face us all: why does time seem to go faster as we age? How do our emotions affect our perception of time? How does our relationship with time differ from others?

Providing comprehensive answers to the most pertinent questions of time perception, this book is an ideal companion for advanced students and researchers interested in the psychology of time.

Part 1
Basic Temporal Processes

1
How Are Timing and Time Perception Studied?

Because the idea of perceiving time, or taking it into account, may take several forms, there are numerous ways of studying it. The following methods presented are classical ones in the field of time perception and should prove useful in the reading of the present work, especially during the first parts. In the third and final part, different tools such as questionnaires were also used for collecting information about psychological time. The following presentation of the methods, therefore, is not exhaustive, the specificity of the questions addressed often requiring methodological adjustments.

Before listing some of the most classical or most often used methods, it is relevant to proceed with some simple distinctions, particularly between two types of experiments and between two types of dependent variables.

General Distinctions

When the participants of an experiment are asked to make explicit judgments about time, these judgments belong to one of two categories: prospective or retrospective (Hicks, Miller, & Kinsbourne, 1976; Tobin, Bisson, & Grondin, 2010). When participants judge duration in a retrospective way, it means that they did not know in advance that they were going to have to estimate the duration of an event or an activity (Bisson, Tobin, & Grondin, 2009; Boltz, 1995, 2005; Eisler, Eisler, & Montgomery, 2004; Grondin & Plourde, 2007). Prospective judgments rather refer to conditions where the participants are informed beforehand by an experimenter that time (the duration of an interval, defined in some way) must be estimated (Brown & Stubbs, 1988; Predebon, 1996; Zakay, 1993). Most of the time, within the framework of retrospective judgments, the intervals to be judged will be long, whereas, in conditions of prospective judgments, the intervals will be very short (from tens of milliseconds to a few seconds).

In order to understand the literature on time perception, it is also important to keep in mind on which of two types of dependent variables the emphasis is put. We could classify these types as being related to the average estimations, by opposition to the variability of these estimations. Suppose that you want to know the efficiency of a person who claims to be able to give you the right time. You ask this person to estimate one minute two different times. The first time, this person indicates that a minute has passed after 59 seconds, and the second time, after 61 seconds. This person’s average timing will be perfect (60 seconds), i.e., on the target. Another person makes similar estimations and indicates that a minute has passed after 55 and 65 seconds; the estimations will also be, on average, on the target, but this second person will exhibit a much larger variability than the first person. When extracting information about duration in the literature, it will thus be necessary to verify if it is about the quality that allows staying on average near the target (the central tendency, or perceived duration) or about the capacity to minimize the gap between the various time estimations (variability).

Specific Investigation Methods

Cognitive psychology researchers interested in the study of psychological time often distinguish four important categories of methods (Bindra & Waksberg, 1956; Wallace & Rabin, 1960; see Block, Grondin, & Zakay, 2018; Grondin, 2008). The first one is called verbal estimation. It first requires the presentation of a target interval to a participant who then has to provide verbally, by means of known chronometric units (second or minutes), an estimation of the aforementioned interval. In a second method, said of production, an experimenter indicates a time interval (duration) to a participant, by means of chronometric units. This participant then has to produce this same interval, usually by using two digital keystrokes (on the space bar of a computer keyboard for example) in order to mark the beginning and the end of the interval, or by pressing a button for duration considered equivalent to the target interval.

A third method, said of reproduction, requires a presentation by an experimenter of a target interval. This interval can be marked by a sound or a continuous visual stimulus, or by two brief signals determining the beginning and the end of the interval to reproduce. There are various ways to make this reproduction. A participant could either have to press a button only at the end of the target interval, following a signal (brief sound or flash) indicating the beginning of the interval to be reproduced, or to press it twice to indicate the beginning and the end of the reproduced interval, or to press it in a continuous way during the duration of the interval to reproduce. The precision turns out to be greater when it is necessary to press the button twice to indicate the beginning and the end of the interval, but the variability is lower when using the method involving a continuous key press during the interval (Mioni, Stablum, McClintock, & Grondin, 2014).

It is worth mentioning that when investigations include retrospective judgments, methods of verbal estimation or of interval reproduction will be used. With the prospective judgments, these three methods can be used, as well as the fourth described in the following text (see Figure 1.1).

Clearly, it is possible to study the perceived duration during prospective judgments by means of the three methods described up to here; it is also possible to study variability by multiplying trials, since interval production and reproduction methods lend themselves better than verbal estimation to an analysis of the variability.

Figure 1.1 Summary of the main methods for investigating the mechanisms involved in the processing of temporal information (Grondin, 2010).

Methods Based on Comparison

The fourth way of investigating time perception is known as the comparison method. It can sometimes be considered as a discrimination task. This method brings us closer to some traditional methods used in psychophysics and since it is often used, in one way or another, in numerous works, it is relevant to describe it in detail and in its various forms. Most of the time, this method contains a comparison between two intervals presented in succession. These intervals to be compared may consist of two continuous sounds or two continuous flashes (which are called filled), the length of which varies; or may consist of a duration between two brief sounds or between two brief flashes (an empty interval) that must be compared with the duration between two other brief sounds or two other brief flashes. Regardless of whether the intervals are empty or filled, most of the time, the participant has to indicate, by pressing the appropriate button, if the second interval is shorter or longer than the first one; therefore, the participant is forced to make a choice between two possibilities.

In psychophysics, we often use a standard and a comparison interval, with the length of this comparison interval being likely to change from trial to trial. When the standard is always presented first, the method is referred to as a reminder task, but when the order of the standard and comparison intervals randomly varies from trial to trial, the method is called roving (Macmillan & Creelman, 1991). Temporal interval discrimination turns out to be much better when the standard, which always keeps the same value, is always presented first (Grondin & McAuley, 2009).

By preselecting a series of comparison intervals (generally from six to eight), some longer and some shorter than the standard, as is done with the constant method—a traditional one in psychophysics—it becomes possible to build psychometric functions. We can extract from these functions two relevant indexes of performance: one about perceived duration and the other about variability. The comparison intervals are randomly presented from trial to trial, every interval being presented several times. The psychometric function contains on the x axis the values of the comparison intervals, in ascending order, and, on the y axis, the probability that the participant answered that the standard interval is greater than the comparison interval. According to the chosen intervals, it usually results in a monotonous ascending function, with the shape of an ogive.

Various models can be adopted to draw with precision the function on which both indexes of interest can be identified: These indexes are the point on the x axis corresponding to 50% of “standard > comparison” responses and the distance on the x axis corresponding to 25% and 75% of “standard > comparison” responses. It is necessary to understand that 25% and 75% represent middle points between a response that is always correct (0% and 100%) and the incapacity to respond (random level: 50%). The 50% value is called the point of subjective equality and provides information on the perceived duration of the second interval compared with the first one. In the second case, the value of the distance between 25% and 75%, divided by 2, will provide a measure of the difference threshold, which is the value from which the participant can give a correct response more than 50% of the time (i.e., above threshold). In fact, this value provides information about the sensitivity of the participant, a smaller value of the threshold indicating a higher sensitivity (or a smaller variability).

It is also possible to extract threshold values on the basis of a series of trials containing a standard and a comparison stimulus, without using the constant method. For instance, an adaptive method can be adopted. In such a case, the comparison intervals are not determined beforehand, but adapted to the fact that a correct or an incorrect response was given by the participant. There are various functioning rules that allow a convergence toward a stimulus value that will be operationally considered as the one reflecting the difference threshold (Grassi & Soranzo, 2009; Kearnbach, 1991).

Comparisons With an Implicit Standard

Some experimental procedures do not require the presentation of a standard presentation on every trial (single stimulus procedure). Strictly speaking, these are categorization procedures, rather than discrimination procedures. In some cases, the task of a participant is to assign the presented interval to one of two categories: “short intervals” vs. “long intervals”. Over the course of trials, the participant develops an implicit standard (Allan, 1979; Morgan, Watamaniuk, & McKee, 2000).

There are, in the psychological time literature, classical variants of the use of the procedure based on the presentation of a single stimulus in each trial. These variants were developed by researchers interested in animal behavior. One is called temporal bisection and is now often used in human timing studies. It consists in a presentation, several times at the beginning of the experience, of the shortest and of the longest intervals (referred to as standards, or anchors) of a series of predetermined intervals. Then, the task consists in determining, on each trial, if the presented interval is closer to the short or the long standard. A psychometric function as that described previously can then be drawn. Another procedure is called temporal generalization. In this case, the interval (standard) representing the middle point of the retained series of intervals for the experiment is first presented several times. The participant then has to indicate, on each trial, whether the presented interval was or was not of the same duration as the standard.

Other Methods or Performance Indexes

Sometimes, for expressing performances about the relative length of intervals (discrimination or categorization), we may simply use the percentage of correct responses for quantifying sensitivity, and the probability of responding more or less often “short” (or “long”) for quantifying perceived duration. We may also express performance levels on the basis of the signal detection theory; for example, the d’ index (pronounced “dee prime”) would indicate the sensitivity level.

In parallel to all these methods, Kuroda and Hasuo (2014) suggest using another classical psychophysical method, called adjustment, for studying time perception. With this method, a participant is successively presented with a standard and a comparison interval. The participant has to adjust the duration of the comparison interval until it seems equal to the duration of the standard. After a series of trials, it becomes possible to obtain a point of subjective equality, which indicates the perceived duration of the comparison interval, and the variability of the va...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• PART 1 Basic Temporal Processes
• PART 2 Time and Pathologies
• PART 3 Personal and Social Time
• Index