Ordinary people think merely of spending time, but schizotypy perceives time more accurately

Duration judgement is a central component of cognitive functioning; however, a substantial body of evidence suggests that time perception is impaired in individuals with schizophrenia and schizotypy, respectively. Conclusions about the similar aetiology of both are constrained by empirical evidence with no evidence about the performance of schizotypy in the temporal estimation task. For the first time, a temporal estimation task examined the impact of schizotypy on both the retrospective and prospective paradigms for visual stimuli. The task involved subjects estimating one of three durations (15 s, 30 s, or 45 s) of a kitten video in either a retrospective or prospective paradigm in Experiment 1 and a video of the River Nene in Northampton, United Kingdom, in Experiment 2. Critical findings that emerged from this study are that high schizotypy subjects appear to have a greater degree of accuracy estimating durations, which is driven by the context of the stimulus. This finding implies that the pacemaker/accumulator component of scalar expectancy theory can be used to further explore timing deficits in schizophrenic subjects and might further imply that timing deficits in schizophrenia are driven by attentional deficits.