A study of temporal estimation from the perspective of the Mental Clock Model

M. Cardaci's (2000) Mental Clock Model maintains that a task requiring a low mental workload is associated with an acceleration of perceived time, whereas a task requiring a high mental workload is associated with a deceleration. The authors examined the predictions of this model in a musical listening condition in which musical pieces were audible in several structural complexities. To measure the effects of musical complexity on time estimation, the authors used retrospective and prospective time-estimation paradigms. For the retrospective paradigm, the authors invited participants to listen to a musical piece and then estimate its duration. For the prospective paradigm, the authors invited participants to stop the musical reproduction after a certain interval of time. Results show that the variations of musical complexity yielded the empirical effects that the Mental Clock Model predicted for both paradigms.