Duration experience for bed-confined subjects: a replication and refinement

This study replicated a 1975 study that tested the theoretical proposition that duration experience is related to the processing of environmental events and that changes in the load and complexity of auditory information will change temporal experience. Duration experience was measured by the productive judgment of a 40-second interval and the retrospective estimate of a 150-minute interval. The sample consisted of 60 men and 60 women, aged 18--35 years, who had no known physical or mental health problems. Subjects rested in bed for two and one-half hours. Each subject received one of four forms of auditory information: decoded heavy, decoded light, coded heavy, and coded light. Three hypotheses were tested: 1) Duration experience will be shorter for decoded light than for coded heavy auditory information. 2) Duration experience will be shorter for subjects in decoded than for subjects in coded auditory information. 3) Duration experience will be shorter for subjects who assign a positive value to the auditory information than for those who assign a negative value. None of the hypotheses was supported by the data. The differences that were demonstrated in the first study did not occur. The major points of diversion in the two studies were the difference in geographic location of the sample, the method of judging a 40-second interval, and payment or nonpayment to the participating subjects.