Ghosts of the past: cognitive load, long-term memory, and metacognitions in duration judgementsGhosts of the past: cognitive load, long-term memory, and metacognitions in duration judgements

Abstract

The current study is aimed to investigate the retrospective duration judgements. The contextual change theory posits that the retrospective assessment of temporal intervals involves both attention and long-term memory. However, the same experimental manipulations can lead to opposite effects. A secondary probe task can both absorb attention resources and generate more short memorable events. The former should lead to a reduction in interval estimation, whereas the latter – to an increase. The predictions of the contextual change model were not supported by its’ authors’ meta-analysis, as well as in several studies with prolonged (9-58 minutes) intervals. We conducted an experiment (N = 92) aiming to establish the role of attention resources and long-term memory in the assessment of prolonged temporal intervals. The results of the study did not show any relation between time estimation and cognitive load or the number of remembered events. However, a posterior analysis of the data was conducted, inspired by the theory of metacognitive assessment of the passage of time, first published in 2022. The results of the posterior analysis demonstrated a connection between time estimation and the discrepancy between remembered events and the perceived quantity of events (metacognitive component). Based on these findings, a model of metacognitive assessment of temporal intervals is proposed, and further research necessary for its validation is suggested.