The influence of task difficulty, success and confidence on perceived brief durations

Janice Hau (1) , Andrei Gorea (1)

1 LPP - UMR 8242 - Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception

Time is constant but it has been repeatedly shown that our perception of time is impacted by many factors. This is evidenced by the growing literature on temporal distortions. The interference effect, the finding that we tend to underestimate temporal durations when temporal processing is disrupted by a secondary (non-temporal) task, has been widely observed in the time literature. However, within the sub-second range the influence of a secondary task on temporal processing has been less-studied and the subject of much debate. In this study we looked at the effect of task difficulty on perceived duration under a dual-task paradigm. Additionally, we investigated two potential factors that may play a role in perceived duration: success and confidence. While no significant effects were found for our three main factors, we propose that our main contribution is our original dual-task visual search paradigm. Our negative results are discussed further with regard to the distinct timing hypothesis, which proposes distinct mechanisms for sub-second and supra-second timing.

Mots clés: perception of duration; millisecond timing; task difficulty; attention; success; confidence; psychophysics

Domaines: Sciences cognitives; Psychologie

Janice Hau, Andrei Gorea. The influence of task difficulty, success and confidence on perceived brief durations. 2011. ⟨hal-00628660⟩