The Effect of Modality on Retrieval of Subjective Duration from Long-Term Memory

Abstract:  It was examined whether stimulus modality (auditory vs. visual) affects the retrieval of subjective duration from memory. In 2 experiments a temporal generalization paradigm was used. Participants had to decide whether the previously learned standard duration (400 ms) occurred in the context of comparison stimuli. Two major results were found. (1) Performance was unaffected by the modality of the training phase, but (2) was biased if both modality of learning and modality of testing were different. Then, judged duration "lengthened", i.e., temporal generalization gradients (the proportion of identifications of a stimulus as the standard, plotted against stimulus duration) shifted to the right. The observed shift is interpreted as a result of a delayed timing process.