Differences In Time Estimation Research Articles

Individual differences in time estimation are associated with delay discounting and alcohol use

Delay discounting is a commonly used behavioral measure of impulsive decision making and it has been shown that disturbed delay discounting is associated with drug dependence, problematic gambling, obesity and risk behavior. It is hypothesized that disturbed delay discounting may be due to aberrations in the subjective perception of time. In this study the associations were examined between subjective time estimation ability, impulsivity and substance use. A sample of healthy undergraduate students (N = 85) performed a time estimation task across 3 different intervals and completed a delay discounting questionnaire (MCQ). Substance use (alcohol and smoking) and personality characteristics reflecting impulsiveness (Eysenck-I7; BIS/BAS) were obtained via self-report. The results suggest that both delay discounting and degree of alcohol use are associated with time estimation abilities. There was a modest U-shaped association between delay discounting and one measure of time estimation (i.e., coefficient of variation). A higher, similar level of estimation error was found for both high and low delay discounting which can be seen as convergent evidence for the existence of a continuum of self-control, associated with behavioral risks and decision-making problems towards the extremes of the scale. Another measure of time estimation error (i.e., autocorrelation) was positively associated with alcohol use which implies a connection between time estimation and a risk factor for the development of alcohol use disorder. Findings suggest the existence of complex psychological associations between time estimation, impulsivity and addiction.

Age-related changes in time production and reproduction tasks: Involvement of attention and working memory processes

ABSTRACT Several studies have reported age-related differences in time estimation, which have been attributed either to a slowing of the pacemaker rate with aging or to impaired attention and/or working resources in older adults. Here, we compared performance of young and older participants on time production/reproduction tasks and on working memory, divided attention, sustained attention and executive attention tasks. Results showed that relative to young participants, older adults significantly under-reproduced and tended to over-produce target durations. Neither attention nor working memory predicted time reproduction and production performance. Conversely, when temporal variability was considered, participants’ temporal variability in time production tasks was exclusively accounted for by age, whereas variability in temporal reproduction was also explained by divided attention and working memory. Overall, our results extend previous investigations on timing abilities in the elderly and underscore the importance of divided attention and working memory in the maintenance of a stable representation of durations.

Prioritization of Software Functional Requirements: Spanning Tree based Approach

Requirements prioritization shows significant role during effective implementation of requirements. Prioritization of requirements is not easy process particularly when requirements are large in size. The current methods of prioritization face limitations as the current prioritization techniques for functional requirements rely on the responses of stakeholders instead of prioritizing requirements on the basis of internal dependencies of one requirement on other requirements. Moreover, there is need to classify requirements on the basis of their importance i.e. how much they are needed for other requirements or dependent on other requirements. Requirements are first represented with spanning trees and then prioritized. Suggested spanning tree based approach is evaluated on requirements of ODOO ERP. Requirements are assigned to four developers. Time estimation with and without prioritization are calculated. The difference in time estimation with prioritization and without prioritization shows the significance of prioritization of functional requirements.

Executive functioning and processing speed in age-related differences in time estimation: a comparison of young, old, and very old adults

ABSTRACTAge-related differences in time estimation were examined by comparing the temporal performance of young, young–old, and old–old adults, in relation to two major theories of cognitive aging: executive decline and cognitive slowing. We tested the hypothesis that processing speed and executive function are differentially involved in timing depending on the temporal task used. We also tested the assumption of greater age-related effects in time estimation in old–old participants. Participants performed two standard temporal tasks: duration production and duration reproduction. They also completed tests measuring executive function and processing speed. Findings supported the view that executive function is the best mediator of reproduction performance and inversely that processing speed is the best mediator of production performance. They also showed that young–old participants provide relatively accurate temporal judgments compared to old–old participants. These findings are discussed in terms of compensation mechanisms in aging.

The Clock'N Test as a Possible Measure of Emotions: Normative Data Collected on a Non-clinical Population.

Objective: At present emotional experience and implicit emotion regulation (IER) abilities are mainly assessed though self-reports, which are subjected to several biases. The aim of the present studies was to validate the Clock’N test, a recently developed time estimation task employing emotional priming to assess implicitly emotional reactivity and IER.Methods: In Study 1, the Clock’N test was administered to 150 healthy participants with different age, laterality and gender, in order to ascertain whether these factors affected the test results. In phase 1 participant were asked to judge the duration of seven sounds. In phase 2, before judging the duration of the same sounds, participants were presented with short arousing video-clip used as emotional priming stimuli. Time warp was calculated as the difference in time estimation between phase 2 and phase 1, and used to assess how emotions affected subjective time estimations. In study 2, a representative sample was selected to provide normative scores to be employed to assess emotional reactivity (Score 1) and IER (Score 2), and to calculate statistical cutoffs, based on the 10th and 90th score distribution percentiles.Results: Converging with previous findings, the results of study 1 suggested that the Clock’N test can be employed to assess both emotional reactivity, as indexed by an initial time underestimation, and IER, as indexed by a progressive shift to time overestimation. No effects of gender, age and laterality were found.Conclusions: These results suggest that the Clock’N test is adapted to assess emotional reactivity and IER. After collection of data on the test discriminant and convergent validity, this test may be employed to assess deficits in these abilities in different clinical populations.

Time Estimation in Alzheimer's Disease: Differences with Normal Aging

Time perception is modified in normal aging and Alzheimer's Disease (AD), yet the nature and the extent of temporal information processing decrease is under debate. This study investigated prospective time estimation in normal aging and AD compared to healthy young adults in a production task. Participants (young adults, older adults, and patients with AD) were asked to produce time intervals with 3 target durations (3, 5, and 8seconds). Compared with young adults, older adults and AD patients demonstrated modifications in time estimation. Remarkably, older adults did not differ from young adults for the accuracy index for shorter durations, unlike AD patients. Moreover, the variability in the temporal performances was significantly greater in AD patients than healthy participants. These findings are discussed to portray the differences in time estimation between normal aging and AD in relation to cognitive deficits observed in AD.

Body movement implied by static images modulates eye movements and subjective time estimation.

present study investigated the influence of body movement implied by artwork on time estimation and its relationship with eye movement. In Experiment 1, the participants were presented with static photographic images of Edgar Degas sculptures that implied different movements. The participants were asked to estimate their exposure times. Overestimation was found for the dancer who represented the greater movement. Eye movements were more directed to legs and arms in the ballerina that implied more movement, indicating more dynamic eye movements for this dancer, which was also overestimated. Experiment 2 further investigated whether this effect was specific to body representation or whether it was linked to the perceptual feature of the images. The participants were presented with drawings that mimicked global shapes (lines) of the Degas sculptures. Differences in time estimation were not obtained under this experimental condition. The results suggest an embodied perception of body movement that modulates eye movements and time estimation. Keywords: time perception, implied movement, eye-tracking, static image, artwork.

Operators' Time Perception Under Stress

Time perception is extremely important to the understanding, design and use of complex military systems. This experiment focused on differences in time estimation, navigation performance, and monitoring tasks. In a between-subjects experiment, participants navigated through a ground scenario while monitoring a screen and listening to white noise at either 55dBA or 85dBA. Performance data was collected throughout the task for both the navigation and monitoring tasks. Participants also completed the NASA-TLX and the DSSQ-S. Statistical analyses showed that the noise condition did not significantly affect workload, monitoring abilities, task completion and time estimates for the dual task. However, the noise did affect subjective state questionnaires. These results suggest that the dual task was not demanding enough and the stress was not adequate to push participants out of the comfort range and experience a performance decrement.

Impulsive and premeditated subtypes of aggression in conduct disorder: differences in time estimation

Research aimed at identifying and studying subtypes of aggression have historically dichotomized aggressive subtypes, although specific nomenclature has varied; one approach has been to classify aggressive behavior as predominantly impulsive or predominantly premeditated. There are a number of behavioral and cognitive differences between those exhibiting these different forms of aggression. This study was designed to extend understanding of the impulsive/premeditated aggression dichotomy by comparing time estimation among adolescents exhibiting predominantly impulsive or predominantly premeditated forms of physical aggression who have a psychiatric diagnosis of conduct disorder (CD). Time estimation has previously been shown to be disrupted in impulsive and some aggressive individuals. Time estimation was compared between healthy Controls (n = 37) and two groups of adolescents with CD, those with histories of either predominantly impulsive (CD-Impulsive, n = 26) or predominantly premeditated (CD-Premeditated, n = 38) aggressive behaviors. Participants completed five computerized trials during which they estimated when 1 min had passed. Among aggressive adolescents with CD, the misperception of time was specific to those with histories of impulsive aggression, although time estimates improved with repeated testing and performance feedback. This study confirms the importance of considering the role and type of physical aggression when studying heterogeneous diagnostic groups like CD and supports the relevance of time estimation to certain subgroups of adolescents with CD.

Effects of Gender and Age on Retrospective Time Judgements

This study provides additional empirical evidence for research concerning the effects of gender and age on retrospective time judgements using data obtained from a Spanish database with more than 40,000 individual observations on time estimations. Statistical analyses were performed using the Levene F-test and the t-test of variances and means, respectively. The most important results of the study are as follows: (a) differences in time estimation in relation to gender largely depend on the age groups analysed, with greater differences observed in the younger age group; and (b) although there are some differences regarding age, they are related to certain age groups, particularly the youngest age group.

Age-related changes and gender differences in time estimation

A study was carried out in which age and gender differences were studied in the performance of an empty interval production task. The duration of these intervals was 10 s, 1 and 5 min. The sample was made up of 140 subjects, half male and half female, in seven different age groups from 8 to 70 years old. The age range permitted us to identify when differences begin to be significant. The results show an age-related increase in the underproduction of the intervals. The differences between age groups attained significance from 51 to 60 years onward. With regard to gender, the main result was a greater underproduction of longer intervals (1 and 5 min) for women. These findings were interpreted in terms of different models of time estimation.

Sex differences in estimation of time intervals and in reaction time are removed by moderate but not high doses of caffeine in coffee.

Estimation of the passage of time in the seconds-to-minutes range and reaction time are strongly dependent on a hypothetical internal clock. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter most closely related to the rate of this clock. Caffeine, probably the most consumed drug in the world, leads to an augmentation of dopamine neurotransmission. In this study coffee, which reproduces the conditions under which caffeine is normally ingested, containing 3, 75, 150 or 300 mg of caffeine, was given to healthy male and female volunteers. A computerized time estimation and reaction time test was carried out 50 min after ingestion. Sex differences in placebo control subjects (who took decaffeinated coffee with 3 mg of caffeine), with females making more accurate estimates of time intervals than males and males showing shorter reaction times than females, were removed in subject taking doses of 75 and 150 mg of caffeine in the case of time estimation and 150 mg in the case of reaction time. The 300 mg dose induced overestimation of time in females and shortened the reaction time in males. There were no sex differences in the pharmacokinetics of caffeine, as measured in salivary concentration of caffeine using high-performance liquid chromatography. Results indicating sex differences in time estimation or reaction time should not be generalized from the laboratory to real life without considering the fact that everyday coffee consumption may eliminate these differences. Copyright 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Time estimation by adults who stutter.

In view of the fact that stuttering involves time pressure in communicative contexts, the aim of this investigation was to study the effect of stuttering on time estimation. Two matching groups of 47 adults each, one consisting of stutterers and the other of fluent speakers, estimated the duration of four verbal tasks-two that involved speaking and two that did not. Two methods of time estimation were used: production and reproduction. In production, participants were required to perform a task, terminating it when they felt that the specified interval had elapsed. In reproduction, participants were asked to estimate the duration of a task immediately after being stopped by the experimenter. The results reveal that the differences in time estimation between adults who stutter and fluent speakers were task dependent, with the stutterers estimating time less accurately on oral verbal tasks. The conversation task in particular highlighted the inaccuracy of their time estimation. Furthermore, severe stutterers estimated time less accurately than mild stutterers. The greatest inaccuracy was displayed by severe stutterers when estimating the time of an oral task by the production method. The results are discussed in terms of cognitive models based on attention to time, method measurement, and mental workload. Clinical implications are also suggested.

Sex-related differences in time estimation: the role of personality

Ambiguous findings on sex-related differences in time estimation may be primarily caused by two factors: (1) unreliable psychophysical methods for assessment of timing performance and (2) lack of control for personality traits that are likely to moderate estimation of time. In the present study, therefore, individual Big-Five personality traits as well as functional and dysfunctional impulsivity scores were obtained from 25 male and 35 female students. Furthermore, all participants were required to reproduce durations ranging from 1 to 5 s. As indicators of timing performance ratio scores, absolute error scores and coefficients of variation were determined. Neither of these psychophysical measures yielded significant differences between the male and female samples. However, stepwise multiple regression analyses revealed that the personality traits Openness to Experience and Dysfunctional Impulsivity account for 45% of the total variance of individual variability in temporal reproductions in the male sample, as compared to only 5% in the female sample.

The effect of gender and time-of-day on time perception and mental workload

Two experiments are reported which investigated how subject gender and time-of-day influenced the estimation of duration and the perception of task-related mental workload. In the first experiment, 24 subjects performed a filled time-estimation task in a constant blacked-out, noise-reduced environment at 0800h, 1200h, 1600h, and 2000h, respectively. In the second experiment, 12 different subjects performed an unfilled time estimation task in similar conditions at 0900h, 1400h, and 1900h. At the termination of all experimental sessions, participants completed the NASA Task Load Index workload assessment questionnaire as a measure of perceived mental workload. Results indicated that physiological response, reflected in body temperature change, followed an expected pattern of sequential increase with time-of-day. However, estimates of duration and the perception of mental workload showed no significant effects for time-of-day. In each of the experiments there were significant differences in time estimation and mental workload response contingent on the gender of the participant. These results are interpreted in light of the previous positive findings for circadian fluctuation in performance efficiency and the equivocal findings of a gender difference in time estimation. A unifying account of these collective results is given based on gender by time-of-day interactional effects.

COMMENT ON NELSON, ETAL: COMPARATIVE TIME ESTIMATION SKILLS OF HISPANIC CHILDREN

Recently Nelson, Smith, Dodd, and Smith reported a dissipation of a cross-cultural difference in time estimation. A number of difficulties in this study are noted and a recommendation for further research is provided. The difficulties include an inappropriate jump to a conclusion about future perspective and the restriction of the dissipation of the cross-cultural difference to Grade 5 children. Research on children beyond Grade 5 would demonstrate the durability of the dissipation reported.

Influence of reflection-impulsivity and cognitive style on time estimation under different ambient conditions.

120 college students estimated seven different durations of a light by the method of reproduction. Each duration reproduction was performed while either counting fast auditory clicks, slow clicks, or with no clicks. The subjects had previously been assessed for cognitive style with the Group Embedded Figures test and for reflection-impulsively with the impulsivity scale from the Personality Research Form. Multivariate analyses of variance indicated that the rapid-tempo ambient conditions had a greater effect on estimation of duration than did either the slow tempo or control condition. There were significant differences in time estimation between reflectives and impulsives for estimations of 10, 30, and 50 sec. No interactions were observed for reflection-impulsivity by ambient conditions. Although cognitive style did not interact with ambient conditions as was predicted, it did interact with sex for three durations, 10, 20, and 30 sec. It was concluded that impulsive students tend to underestimate the brief times more than do reflective students but are not affected differently by the ambient circumstances in which the estimation is made. Cognitive style, apparently, does not have a profound influence on estimation of brief durations. However, sex and cognitive style in interaction do affect these estimations, this requires further research.

Time estimation in relation to gait tempo.

This study investigated the effect of accelerated and decelerated rates of walking on judgment of a 40-sec. interval in 52 healthy male Ss. The production method of time estimation was used. Analysis of variance yielded no difference in time estimation in response to the imposed gait tempos. Intra-group variation was large. A low correlation between individual gait tempo and time estimate suggests that individuals with faster gait tempos tend to overestimate an interval of time and those with slower gait tempos tend to underestimate.

Physiological arousal and time estimation.

The relations between four indices of arousal (heart rate, respiration rate, dominant EEG alpha rate, and an integrated score of EEG activity) and three methods of time estimation (verbal estimation, production, and tapping) were tested. 40 students, chosen according to their scores on the Taylor MAS, estimated short intervals under low and high (threat of shock) induced-arousal conditions. The data indicated relationships between dominant alpha rate and time estimation within each induced-arousal condition (thus supporting Hoagland's chemical clock hypothesis) and between heart rate and time estimation within the high induced-arousal condition. No significant differences in time estimation by any method between induced-arousal conditions were found. Physiological and psychological differences between induced and chronic arousal states are pointed out and the meaning of the results for the concept of arousal is discussed.

Sex Differences in the Sense of Time: Failure to Replicate a 1904 Study

McDougall ( 1904), Yerkes and Urban ( 1906), and other early investigators reported sex differences in time estimation by human Ss, and more recent studies ( Loehlin, 1959) have reported no difference. This replication of McDougall's study followed his procedure as reported with the addition of more Ss and variables. Forty male and 78 female students in introductory psychology estimated four intervals (15, 30, 60, 90 sec.) under four conditions (listening to E read, crossing our 77zs, waiting, counting) by the method of verbal estimation at one of five sessions throughout the day. Differences between mean estimates given by males and those given by females were not significant for any of the conditions and were opposite in direction to what would be expected from McDougall's resulcs. Our obtained differences among the conditions were similar in rank but different in magnitude. McDougall's Ss overestimated all intervals with one exception; the present Ss underestimated all intervals. Additional hypotheses investigated concerned the influence of the time of day at which the estimates were made (Thor & Baldwin, 1965), the effect of the onset of the menstrual cycle, and the importance of psychosexual role identification (PRI) as measured by the Gough femininity scale (Gough, 1952). None of these variables s~gn~ficantly affected time estimates of men and women. However, the relation of b~ological sex and scores on PRI needs particular clarification in fumre research. Assuming the early studies were accurate, Loehlin's hypothesis of changing cultural roles as a determinant of time perception may be essentially cotrecc.