Time judgments as a function of clock duration: effects of temporal paradigm and an attention-demanding nontemporal...

Participants estimated the duration of one of four intervals (12.5, 25, 37.5, 50 sec.). They performed an attention-demanding nontemporal task (the 'Stroop' task) during the interval's presentation. Half of the participants in each group were told of the time judgment task prior to the interval's presentation (prospective paradigm), and the other half after its presentation (retrospective paradigm). Both prospective and retrospective time judgments substantially underestimated the durations of intervals, and there was no significant effect of temporal paradigm. The results are discussed in relation to the attentional models of timing.