Distortions of Time Perception during Critical Situations

Abstract

Humans are good at estimating durations of time. The person's time perception is affected by emotion (Eiser, 2009). To allow for these predictions, an internal signal that provides the organism with a sense of time has to exist. An information-processing model of Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET) and its evolution into the neurobiologically plausible Striatal Beat-Frequency (SBF) theory, contemporaneously are the most accepted to explain this ability to perceive time (van Rijn, Gu & Meck, 2014). According to this theory initially developed by Gibbon et al, the “internal clock” is comprised of a pacemaker that emits pulses at a regular rate and a switch controls how many pulses enter into an accumulator, which stores the number of pulses during the event to be timed. With longer stimulus duration, more pulses are accumulated and consequently the higher the value of the time (Weber’s law) (Gibbon, 1977).