Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Although understood that time perception is subjective, the underlying cognitive mechanisms are not well described. Eventsegmentation theories propose that spatial information serves to segment experienced information in discrete units whichthen can be used to estimate time. Based on this theory, we explored whether subjective time perception is influenced bythe amount of perceived spatial information. A group of young participants viewed short videos of episodes that includeda spatial change (e.g., moving through doorways) or no spatial change. In one experiment, participants were asked toestimate a given time duration while viewing the video and in a second experiment, participants estimated the time of thevideo after viewing. Across experiments, videos with spatial change were associated with more accurate time perceptionestimates than those without spatial changes. These results highlight the important role of spatial processing in directingthe experience of time.