Working memory for time intervals: another manifestation of the central tendency effect

Abstract

The relationship between working memory and time perception has been typically investigated using dual-task paradigms (e.g., testing timing performance during a concurrent task). To our knowledge, none of these studies used time intervals as the target stimulus to be remembered. The current study investigated the working memory for time intervals by asking participants to reproduce durations they experienced at different orders in a series of experienced intervals (n-back task). One of the experiments was conducted online and the other one in the lab setting. Results showed a central tendency bias and additive elongation of time reproductions with increasing working memory load. Our results also showed that participants assigned different weights to experienced intervals based on their order of presentation (higher weight to the target interval). We conclude that the recall of intervals from working memory under high cognitive load leads to a central tendency effect, which is known to be induced by the temporal context and present particularly in aging and in those with Parkinson's disease.