Temporal experience as a function of organization in memory

Abstract

The relationship between memory organization and perceived duration was investigated in two experiments. Degree of organization of the memory representation for an interval was assumed to be inversely related to the complexity of the interval’s content. Organization was manipulated by presenting an ambiguous stimulus during the interval either with or without the aid of a code that simplified the stimulus. Subjects judged the duration of a 60-sec interval by the method of magnitude estimation and then recalled the interval’s contents. In both experiments, facilitating memory organization by presenting the simplifying code before the interval was found to shorten apparent duration. In the second experiment, presenting the code after the stimulus interval also significantly shortened apparent duration when compared with the “no-code” condition. In general, the results were consistent with Ornstein’s (1969) storage size notion of the experience of duration. Some limitations of the storage size hypothesis are discussed. © 1979, The Psychonomic Soceity, Inc.. All rights reserved.