The Memory Content Model: A New Approach for Understanding Retrospective Timing Judgements

Abstract

Two paradigms that frequent time perception literature are prospective and retrospective timing judgments. The former involves notifying participants beforehand of the duration judgment task that follows the initial task. In the latter, participants are not aware of the impending duration task. Many have claimed that two distinct processes underlie prospective and retrospective judgments—attention/executive control and memory, respectively. However, most of the literature has focused solely on attention and executive control. The current study attempts to fill the gap in retrospective timing studies and proposes a new memory content model, which suggests that the content of one’s memory, specifically whether something tangible can be retrieved from it, is the information that is used to make retrospective estimates of shorter durations. The results support the model—remembered scenes are given longer duration estimates than forgotten scenes and duration estimates increase as confidence in memory increases.