By psychological point of view, the concept of time estimation is presented, we also discuss some perspective and problem on psychological research on time estimation.

1. Structural alignment and
retrospective duration
estimates
John L. Dennis & Arthur B. Markman

2. what do i do?
• temporal metaphors
– linguistics/embodied cognition
• narrative duration estimates –
– fantasy time vs. “reality” time
• temporal construal
– temporal distance changes
representation
• subjective duration estimate
– structural alignment event comparison

3. methodologies
• verbal
– after experience subjects have to estimate
duration in terms of clock ticks
• reproduction
– subjects delimit a second time period
corresponding to their previous experience
• production
– a duration is stated verbally and subjects are
asked to delimit a time period equal to stated
duration
• comparison
– compare current duration to standard duration

4. how are estimates made?
• prospectively
– subjects are aware that they will make an
estimate for an upcoming experience
– think of waiting – there one’s attention is
presumably drawn to time and therefore,
one becomes engaged in prospective
timing. the result is that time seems
protracted. (connection to temporal
metaphors)

5. how are estimates made?
• retrospectively
– subjects learn after the fact that they
need to make an estimate for their
previous experience
– think of being engrossed in a task – there
one’s attention is presumably not drawn
to time and therefore, one becomes
disengaged in prospective timing. the
result is that time seems contracted.

6. task difficulty & methodology
• low task difficulty typically leads to longer
duration estimates especially for
reproduction and verbal
– because more attention is allocated for
attending to duration
• high task difficulty typically leads to longer
duration for production and shorter duration
for verbal (Chaston & Kingstone, 2004)
– because less attention is allocated for attending
to duration

7. prospective vs. retrospective
• stated simply – prospective relies on
encoding of temporal information – but
retrospective relies on encoding of
nontemporal information.
• prospective duration are typically longer
than remembered durations (Block & Zakay,
1997)
• retrospective judgments depend mainly on
the retrieval of contextual information
encoded during the event.
• James (1890), p. 620

8. prospective vs. retrospective
• all things being equal, as contextual changes
increase remembered duration will increase.
(Block, 1985; Fraisse, 1963)
• changes include – environmental context, mood
and type of task, etc.
– same task – shorter, change tasks – longer
– complex stimuli – longer, simple stimuli – shorter (Ornstein,
1969)
– high segmentation – longer (Poynter, 1983; Zakay et al,
1994)
– first time task is done – longer, routine – shorter (Avni-Babad
& Ritov, 2003)
• one caveat – higher contextual change within a
routine leads to shorter duration – which leads to
the conclusion that when changes become
routinized they do not operate as changes
anymore. (Avni-Babad & Ritov, 2003).

9. individual, population & cultural
differences (& caffeine drinkers)
• sex differences (Block, Hancock & Zakay,
2000)
– in prospective timing women pay more attention
to time and have better episodic memory in the
retrospective paradigm
• older adults give larger verbal estimates and
shorter productions of duration & there is no
difference for reproduction estimates (Block,
Zakay & Hancock, 1998)
• for prospective duration estimates – children
make larger verbal estimates, shorter
reproductions and no difference for
productions (Zakay & Hancock, 1999)

10. individual, population & cultural
differences (& caffeine drinkers)
• Parkinson’s Disease patients longer duration
estimates than reality (Pastor, et al, 1992)
• Schizophrenia patients faster duration
estimates than reality and Elvevag (2003)
proposes that this may be caused not by
memory deficits, but by dysfunctions of
biospsychological timing mechanisms
(Elvevag, 2003; Tysk, 1983, 1984, 1990)

11. individual, population & cultural
differences (& caffeine drinkers)
• while various cultures differ in terms of beliefs
in physical and personal time, but these
beliefs do not influence experienced and
remembered duration (Hill, et al., 2000;
Block, et al., 1996)
• caffeine causes participants to have shorter
prospective durations, but has no effect for
retrospective - not increased clock rate –
but increased arousal (Gruber & Block, 2003)

12. models
• Internal Clock Model – Treisman (1963)
• Attentional Model (Thomas & Weaver, 1975)
• Temporal Information Processing Model
(Gibbon, et al, 1984)
• Attentional Gate Model (Block & Zakay,
1996; Zakay & Block, 1995, 1996, 1997; Zakay,
2000)
• Lejeune, (1998; 2000) – excellent review and
defense of TIP

13. models – where do i stand?
right now, not sure where I stand in
terms of the models, currently it seems
to me that TIP is more parsimonious for
prospective timing in animals, but that
the attentional gate of the AGM is
needed for animals – because I believe
that Zakay (2000) has argued
persuasively that perceptual
information processing and attention
are largely two independent systems.

14. brain mechanisms
• currently, I agree with Nobre & O’Reilly
(2004) in that while there are core
concepts that are shared by most of
the models there are significant
differences and therefore, how we
interpret the specific functional brain
areas that contribute to the process
relies heavily on the model that is
embraced. (more in the paper.)

15. but... here is a short list
• internal clock linked to basal ganglia (Meck,
1986, Pastor et al., 1992)
• some duration judgments linked to
cerebellum (Clark et al., 1992)
• since time perception has been proposed
to rely on numerous underlying cortical
networks – the right hemisphere prefrontal-
inferior parietal network (Harrington et al.,
1998)

16. structural alignment
• research has shown that similarity is well
described as a comparison of structured
representations. the process yields
commonalities/differences related to the
commonalities – i.e., alignable differences,
and differences that are not related to
commonalities – i.e., nonalignable
differences (Markman & Gentner, 1996)
• motels vs. hotels or motels vs. trees

17. general hypothesis:
• the general hypothesis:
– structural alignment is that (all else being
equal) alignable differences are more
focal than nonalignable differences.
– People's judgments of the relative time
would be affected more by having that
target event be alignable to something in
the base event.

18. radical hypothesis
• novel experiences have a protracted sense of
duration, and the 2nd time through an experience
seems shorter than the 1st. the nonaligned event
could be thought of as novel experience and the
aligned event could be thought of as the 2nd time
through an experience. but if the alignment
process causes a target event to be aligned with a
longer base event, then we could find that aligned
event will have a protracted sense of duration as
compared to the nonaligned event.
• in this way we could think that the alignment
process as “borrowing” the temporal duration of
the first event via the alignment process.
• maybe not so radical – James (1990) p. 611.

19. experiment
the general idea is:
Base Short Event or Long Event
Test AD Event or NAD Event

20. experiment
the general idea is to examine the role
of the alignment process when
comparing event sequences. the
general prediction of structural
alignment is that alignable differences
are more focal than nonalignable
differences. we hypothesize that
peoples judgments of relative time
would be more affected by having the
second test event be alignable to the
base event than if the second test
event was nonalignable with the base
event.

21. experiment
the base events vary in terms of their duration –
i.e., the number of trials. the base “event”
contains two tasks – where for the first task the
subject needs to determine whether a “word” was
spelled correctly, and for the second task I use the
Ponzo illusion and subjects have to determine
whether two lines have the same length. The AD
test “event” contains two tasks. for the first task
subjects need to determine whether a “word” is a
word or a nonword, and for the second task I use
the Mueller-Lyer illusion and subjects have to
determine whether the two lines have the same
length. The NAD test “event” contains two tasks,
the first task subjects have to count the number of
items on the screen and for the second task
subjects have to state whether they saw a zero
(O) in a brief display of numbers.

22. experiment
results – to be continued