Cognitive Effects on Duration Estimation and Passage of Time Judgments, Prospectively, Retrospectively, in and out of Lockdown

Abstract Psychological time is affected by many factors such as arousal, emotion, attention and memory. While laboratory observations are well documented, whether cognitive effects on time perception replicate in real-life settings is unclear. In this study, we exploited a set of data collected online during the Covid-19 pandemic, in which participants performed a verbal working-memory task parametrically manipulating their cognitive load (n-back: 1, 3). At the end of each working-memory trial, participants estimated the duration that just elapsed while performing the n-back task and rated their experience of the passage of time. In this within-participant design, we first tested whether the amount of information in working-memory affects time perception in opposite ways when duration estimations are made prospectively (i.e. when participants pay attention to time) or retrospectively (i.e. when they do not pay attention to time). Second, the same working hypothesis was tested on the experienced passage of time, which has been argued to capture a temporal phenomenology distinct from duration. We find that participants judged time to pass much faster during retrospective trials than in prospective. Third, we assessed the mapping between duration estimation and passage of time ratings, and show that short durations tend to be experienced as fast. Last, we contrasted two groups of individuals tested in and out of lockdown to assess the effects of social isolation: duration estimation and the experienced passage of time were affected distinctly although both were consistent with one another. We conclude by discussing the effects of cognitive load on time estimations.