Prospective Judgment of Short-Intervals in a Cohort of University Students

Abstract

Ability to perceive fast-paced events (a range of short intervals) is one of the important cognitive skills in humans. The underlying mechanism of this ability still remains elusive. We designed a study to investigate the subjective perception of short-intervals (10, 20, 60 and 120 s) in a cohort of healthy young male and female university students. The subjects estimated the time intervals, prospectively using time production (TP) and verbal estimation (VE) methods. Of the four tested intervals, subjects produced 60 s close to accuracy than other intervals. The intervals were overproduced and underestimated with TP and VE, respectively. Males estimated 60 s more accurately than females. In all subjects, verbal estimates of 60 and 120 s were positively correlated with sleep duration. The duration of exposure to direct sunlight was significantly correlated with the verbal estimation of 60 and 120 s intervals in females. It is concluded that humans track passage of short intervals fairly accurately and 60 s might be the interval that is judged more accurately in males. This behavior could be ascribed to the interval timer that might have evolved with frequently used verbal expression, i.e., “wait a minute please!” In addition, the factors, such as gender, sleep duration and length of sunlight exposure might considerably modulate human abilities to sense time.