Time Perception in Changing Tempos

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Time Perception in Changing Tempos
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Ben PaciorkowskiDavid Phelps
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Introduction

• How fast is this year passing for everyone?
• Say fast if fast
• Say slow if slow
• Say normal if normal

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Background Research

• Research of external auditory stimuli are far
  from complete (Lewkowicz) yet we live in an
  ever-increasingly auditory world, full of
  artificial sounds. A few significant factors
• Likeability of Music (Lopez Malhorta 1991),
• Pitch of Melodies (Crowder Neath 1995),
• Rhythm (Martin 1972 Handel 1989)
• Frequency (Yoblick Salvendy 1970)
• and Tempo (Polkosky 2002).

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Measuring Time

• 3 Methods of time estimation
• Verbal Estimates - After-the-fact
• Production - Psychophysical
• Reproduction

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Tempo

• Background research employs verbal estimates only
  (Polkosky 2002).
• As ticking rate increases so does verbally
  reported estimations of time such that there is a
  significant difference between fast and slow
  tempo.
• We thought, however, that this difference would
  not generalize to a psychophysical method in
  which subjects were focused on counting seconds.

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Cadence Effect

• We hypothesized that the two tempos would not
  produce significantly different results, but the
  silent condition would create variability of
  estimations due to the CADENCE EFFECT.
• When counting by seconds we thought the presence
  of a tempo would act as an aid towards
  eliminating variance between individual seconds.

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Participants

• Male 9
• Female 9
• 18-21 years old
• All of them college students

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Central Question

• What are the effects of Tempo (IV) on Estimation
  of Time Duration (DV)?
• IV levels slow, fast, silent
• DV measurement error in seconds, or variability
  of seconds

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Procedure

• Close eyes and count by seconds
• When you think sixty seconds has passed say out
  loud NOW, and keep counting
• After 3 NOWS we randomly change the musical
  loop
• 3 possible loops (Fast, Slow, Silent)
• Stop after 9 NOWS (not necessarily 9 minutes)

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Estimations of Time

• A repeated-measures analysis of variance produced
  the following three conditions,
• Fast (M 10.8)
• Slow (M 10.9)
• Silence (M 13.8)
• The general pattern of the results was in the
  expected direction but had no significance at p lt
  .05.

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Error in Estimates
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A By the way Study

• A Repeated Measures analysis testing for a main
  effect of gender on error of time estimation did
  not find overall significance at a p lt .05 for
  the silence and fast tempo conditions
• But on the condition of slow tempo, a significant
  difference was found such that men (M 6.9) are
  more accurate than women (M 14.8) at p .04

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Error in Estimates by Gender
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The Cadence Effect

• A paired samples test run for every minute
  against every other minute found only one
  instance of significance between the first
  silent minute and second silent minute at p .02
• Is this because production of seconds in the
  silent condition is subject to more variation?

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Graph

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Limitations

• Did not measure for anxiety or discomfort
• Some people may be more conditioned to count
  accurately in their heads (band students for
  example)
• 1 Minute may have been too short a duration to
  find significance. People are relatively accurate
  at counting for short intervals. Perhaps try
  longer intervals
• No variance of ages

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Discussion

• Results showed insignificant results showing that
  silence had more error than the tempo conditions.
• Cant rely on watches and cell phones for every
  second of our lives
• Must depend on our internal clocks sometime
• Audio is just one of the many factors that can
  affect time perception