Time perception, attention, and memory: A selective review Richard A. Block a, ⁎, Ronald P. Gruber b a Department of Psychology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717-3440, United States b Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, CA 94305-5101, United States abstract article info Article history: Received 13 January 2013 Received in revised form 24 October 2013 Accepted 13 November 2013 Available online 21 December 2013 PsycINFO classification: 2300 Keywords: Time perception Time estimation Attention Memory This article provides a selective review of time perception research, mainly focusing on the authors' research. Aspects of psychological time include simultaneity, successiveness, temporal order, and duration judgments. In contrast to findings at interstimulus intervals or durations less than 3.0–5.0 s, there is little evidence for an “across-senses” effect of perceptual modality (visual vs. auditory) at longer intervals or durations. In addition, the flow of time (events) is a pervasive perceptual illusion, and we review evidence on that. Some temporal information is encoded All rights reserved. relatively automatically into memory: People can judge time- related attributes such as recency, frequency, temporal order, and duration of events. Duration judgments in pro- spective and retrospective paradigms reveal differences between them, as well as variables that moderate the processes involved. An attentional-gate model is needed to account for prospective judgments, and a contextual-change model is needed to account for retrospective judgments. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Scientific research on time perception is multifaceted. Time percep- tion involves the study of diverse perceptual, cognitive, and brain pro- cesses. Research on psychological time dates to Vierordt (1868). He is usually cited for his research using himself and a student as the only subjects in a very large and data-rich repeated-measures design (Lejeune & Wearden, 2009). Vierordt is best-known for what re- searchers now call Vierordt's Law, a basic finding. He found that from seconds to years, the same law holds: Judgments of relatively short in- tervals are lengthened, and judgments of relatively long intervals are shortened. However, this finding is more general. This finding might re- flect a central-tendency effect in judgment. For example, when people judge the likelihood of causes of death or when they judge the duration of typical autobiographical or naturalistic experiences (Yarmey, 2000; see later), they also tend greatly to overestimate short magnitudes and slightly to underestimate longer magnitudes. Many processes are involved in psychological timing, whether by non- human animals or by humans. It is now apparent that many brain areas subserve the experiencing and remembering of various aspects of time. In this review of older and more recent evidence, we discuss these aspects, and we provide a view on psychological time, both within and across senses. We focus especially on perceptual and cognitive processes within perceptual modalities, but we also review evidence on processes between them. Thus, based on recent meta-analytic findings, we also focus on time perception within and across senses, or perceptual modalities. Shifting to physics, Einstein (1955/1979) said that “people like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” Pirsig (1974) wrote: “We want to make good time [on a motorcycle trip], but for us now this is measured with emphasis on ‘good’ rather than ‘time’ and when you make that kind of shift in emphasis the whole approach changes” (p. 5). To us, what is especially “good” is the resurgence of studies of psychological time during the past decade or two (Hancock & Block, 2012). What is the past, present, and future except for a stubborn per- ceptual and cognitive illusion? What is psychological time? The answers to these questions depend on evidence and theories. We selectively re- view these questions, among others. Various aspects of psychological time involve dissociable perceptual and cognitive processes (Block, 1996; Block & Zakay, 2001; Pöppel, 1997). We also review these pro- cesses and the evidence for them, as well as some applications (Block & Hancock, in press). We mainly focus on our past and present research findings, but of course we include other findings. 2. Simultaneity, successiveness, and temporal order Researchers in the tradition of time psychophysics have examined questions, especially about very short duration experiences, for many decades. Although methods have been refined over the years (Grondin, 2008; Pöppel, 1988; Zakay, 1990), many basic findings are now clear (Eisler, Eisler, & Hellström, 2008). Simultaneity is experienced if two auditory stimuli occur less than about 2–3 ms (longer for visual stimuli). Successiveness is only experi- enced at slightly longer durations. However, temporal-order judgments cannot be made until the interstimulus interval is about 20–30 ms Acta Psychologica 149 (2014) 129–133 ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 406 994 5173. E-mail address: block@montana.edu (R.A. Block). 0001-6918/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2013.11.003 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/ locate/actpsy