Effects of motion on time perception

To investigate the effect of motion on time perception, participants were asked to perform either a temporal discrimination task or a temporal generalization task while running or standing still on a treadmill. In the temporal discrimination (bisection) task, 10 participants were exposed to two anchor stimuli, a 300-ms Short tone and a 700-ms Long tone, and then classified intermediate durations in terms of their similarity to the anchors. In the temporal generalization task, 10 other participants were exposed to a standard duration (500 ms) and then judged whether or not a series of comparison-durations, ranging from 300 ms to 700 ms, had the same duration as the standard. The results showed that in the temporal bisection task the participants produced more “Long” responses under the dual-task condition (temporal judgments + running) than under the single-task condition (temporal judgments only). In the temporal generalization task, accuracy in the temporal judgments was lower in the dual-task condition than the single-task condition. These results are discussed in the light of dual-task paradigm and of the Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET).This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: SQAB 2012.

► We evaluated the effects of motion on time perception.
► Human participants performed temporal bisection and temporal generalization tasks while running.
► The effects of running may depend on the experimental task.
► Running may accelerate the internal clock, or running may increase errors in temporal memory.