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Effect of task length on remembered and predicted duration
Michael M Roy1, Nicholas J S Christenfeld
1Department of Psychology, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania 17022, USA. roym@etown.edu
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|July 9, 2008
Summary
Vierordt's law applies to time perception. People overestimate short task durations and underestimate long ones, for both past and future estimates.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psychophysics
- Time Perception
Background:
- Vierordt's (1868) law describes temporal estimation biases for past events.
- This law suggests overestimation of short durations and underestimation of long durations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if Vierordt's law extends to remembered and predicted task durations.
- To examine temporal estimation biases for tasks ranging from 1 to 15 minutes.
Main Methods:
- Participants estimated the duration of tasks they had previously completed.
- Participants also predicted the duration of future tasks.
- Task durations varied between 1 and 15 minutes.
Main Results:
- Consistent with Vierordt's law, short task durations (under 2 minutes) were overestimated.
- Long task durations were underestimated.
- This pattern held true for both remembered and predicted durations.
Conclusions:
- Vierordt's law accurately describes temporal estimation biases for remembered durations.
- The findings support the extension of Vierordt's law to predicted future durations.
- Temporal estimation biases are present across different time scales and memory types.
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