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Abstract
Depressed patients frequently report a subjective slowing of the passage of time. However, experimental demonstrations of altered time perception in depressed patients are not conclusive. We added a timed action task (time-to-contact estimation, TTC) and compared this indirect time perception task to the more direct classical methods of verbal time estimation, time production, and time reproduction. In the TTC estimation task, the deviations of the estimates from the veridical values (relative errors) revealed no differences between depressed patients (N= 22) and healthy controls (N= 22). Neither did the relative errors of the TTC estimates differ between groups. There was a weak trend toward higher variability of the estimates in depressed patients but only at the shortest TTC and at the fastest velocities. Time experience (subjective flow of time) as well as time perception in terms of interval timing (verbal estimation, time production, time reproduction) performed on the same subjects likewise failed to produce effects of depression. We conclude that the notion that depression has a sizeable effect on time perception cannot be maintained.
Highlights
Depressed patients frequently report a slowing and sometimes even an apparent arrest of the passage of time (e.g., Straus, 1947; Dubois, 1954; Grondin et al, 2006; Gil and Droit-Volet, 2009), using statements like “Every hour seems a year to me” (Mezey and Cohen, 1961) or “Time doesn’t seem to move at all” (Straus, 1947)
For each subject × task × time interval combination, observations more than three times the interquartile range below the first quartile or above the third quartile were classified as outliers (Lovie, 1986), and were excluded from the analysis
CORRELATIONS BETWEEN beck depression inventory (BDI) SCORES AND MEASURES OF TIME PERCEPTION As shown in Table 1, the relative errors and the Weber fractions on the three classical timing tasks, the TTC estimation task, and the retrospective time judgment were not significantly correlated with the depression severity scores obtained on the BDI
Summary
Depressed patients frequently report a slowing and sometimes even an apparent arrest of the passage of time (e.g., Straus, 1947; Dubois, 1954; Grondin et al, 2006; Gil and Droit-Volet, 2009), using statements like “Every hour seems a year to me” (Mezey and Cohen, 1961) or “Time doesn’t seem to move at all” (Straus, 1947). Three tasks have been used; (a) verbal time estimation, where the subject is asked to give an estimate in time units like seconds or minutes of a presented time interval, which is marked for instance by two brief tones or comparable visual stimuli for example flashes (e.g., Dilling and Rabin, 1967; Bech, 1975; Kitamura and Kumar, 1983; Bschor et al, 2004), (b) time production, where a time interval is specified in temporal units and the subject is asked to produce this interval for example by pressing a button to mark the interval’s beginning and end (e.g., Tysk, 1984; Münzel et al, 1988) and (c) time reproduction, where a time interval is presented first as in (a) and in a second step the subject reproduces the interval as in (b) based on his (short term) memory representation of the interval (Mundt et al, 1998; Mahlberg et al, 2008) These three tasks have in common that they measure the estimation or production of defined time intervals rather than a general subjective experience of the flow of time. Production and reproduction especially of short intervals might be influenced by motor-related impairments in depressive subjects whereas verbal estimation could provide data that are independent of this variable
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