Castellotti Serena, D'Agostino Ottavia, Biondi Alessandra, Pignatiello Luigi, Del Viva Maria Michela
Department of Neurofarba, University of Florence, 1035 Florence, Italy.
Department of Medicine and Surgery, University of Parma, 43126 Parma, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2022 Mar 18;12(3):404. doi: 10.3390/brainsci12030404.
The passing of time can be precisely measured by using clocks, whereas humans' estimation of temporal durations is influenced by many physical, cognitive and contextual factors, which distort our internal clock. Although it has been shown that temporal estimation accuracy is impaired by non-temporal tasks performed at the same time, no studies have investigated how concurrent cognitive and motor tasks interfere with time estimation. Moreover, most experiments only tested time intervals of a few seconds. In the present study, participants were asked to perform cognitive tasks of different difficulties (look, read, solve simple and hard mathematical operations) and estimate durations of up to two minutes, while walking or sitting. The results show that if observers pay attention only to time without performing any other mental task, they tend to overestimate the durations. Meanwhile, the more difficult the concurrent task, the more they tend to underestimate the time. These distortions are even more pronounced when observers are walking. Estimation biases and uncertainties change differently with durations depending on the task, consistent with a fixed relative uncertainty. Our findings show that cognitive and motor systems interact non-linearly and interfere with time perception processes, suggesting that they all compete for the same resources.
时间的流逝可以通过时钟精确测量,而人类对时间间隔的估计会受到许多生理、认知和情境因素的影响,这些因素会干扰我们的生物钟。尽管已经表明,同时进行的非时间任务会损害时间估计的准确性,但尚无研究调查同时进行的认知和运动任务如何干扰时间估计。此外,大多数实验只测试了几秒的时间间隔。在本研究中,参与者被要求在行走或坐着的同时执行不同难度的认知任务(看、读、解决简单和复杂的数学运算)并估计长达两分钟的持续时间。结果表明,如果观察者只关注时间而不执行任何其他心理任务,他们往往会高估持续时间。同时,同时进行的任务越困难,他们就越容易低估时间。当观察者行走时,这些偏差会更加明显。估计偏差和不确定性会根据任务的不同而随持续时间发生不同的变化,这与固定的相对不确定性一致。我们的研究结果表明,认知和运动系统以非线性方式相互作用并干扰时间感知过程,这表明它们都在争夺相同的资源。