Elsevier

Journal of Affective Disorders

Volume 196, 15 May 2016, Pages 154-163
Journal of Affective Disorders

Research paper
Time perception in anxious and depressed patients: A comparison between time reproduction and time production tasks

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.02.047Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Differences in time perception in anxious and depressed patients.

  • Time reproduction task is used to highlights differences at the attentional level.

  • Time production task is used to highlights differences at pacemaker level.

  • Different involvement of spontaneous tempo, speed of processing and executive functions in time perception.

Abstract

Several studies reported temporal dysfunctions in anxious and depressed patients. In particular, compared to controls, anxious patients report that time is passing fast whereas depressed patients report that time passes slowly. However, in some studies, no differences between patients and controls are reported. Direct comparison between studies may be complex because of methodological differences, including the fact of conducting investigations with different temporal ranges. In the present study, we tested a group of anxious patients, a group of depressed patients, and a control group with two temporal tasks (time reproduction and time production) with the same temporal intervals (500, 1000 and 1500 ms) to further investigate the presence and cause of patients' temporal dysfunctions. Results showed that, compared to controls, anxious patients under-reproduced temporal intervals and depressed patients over-produced temporal intervals. The results suggest that time dysfunction in anxious patients would be mainly due to an attentional dysfunction whereas temporal dysfunction in depressed patients would be mainly due to variations in the pulses' emission rate of the pacemaker.

Introduction

The ability to accurately estimate the passage of time plays an important role in daily activities; therefore, it is important to understand what factors are critical in determining our ability to correctly assess the passage of time. According to a dominant view in the field of time perception, temporal judgments are based on a pacemaker–counter device (Treisman, 1963) and the Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET; Gibbon et al., 1984) is probably the most frequently cited model derived from the pacemaker-accumulator perspective describing time processing. The SET includes the clock (pacemaker-counter), the memory, and the decision making stages. A pacemaker emits pulses at a rate that is typically constant but may be affected by arousal level: high levels of arousal increase the frequency of pacemaker signals (Lui et al., 2011). These pulses are stored in the accumulator. The memory stage is conceptualized as the storing system that accumulates pulses in working memory for comparison with the content of reference memory. The reference memory contains a long-term memory representation of number of pulses accumulated across prior trials. The final stage is the decision stage, in which the number of pulses accumulated during a given trial is compared with those stored in reference memory. Cognitive models on prospective time (i.e., when a person estimates the duration of a time interval that was previously experienced) propose that an individual's perception of time is registered when attention is drawn to time. Thus, according to the Attentional Gate Model (Zakay and Block, 1996), when more resources are allocated for timing, the gate is more widely opened, allowing for more signals entering in the accumulator, resulting in longer perceived durations and more accurate temporal judgments.

Four main tasks are typically used in the time perception studies (Grondin, 2008, Grondin, 2010): (1) time discrimination, (2) time production, (3) verbal estimation, and (4) time reproduction. In time discrimination tasks, participants are required to compare the relative duration of two intervals that are sequentially presented and then decide which one was longer or shorter. In time production tasks, participants are required to translate an objectively labelled duration to a subjectively experienced duration (i.e., produce 1 s). On contrary, in verbal estimation tasks, participants experience the target duration and then are required to translate it into chronometric units. Finally, in time reproduction tasks, participants are required to reproduce the duration of the stimulus that was previously presented (Grondin, 2010).

Specific predictions can be made about temporal performances depending on the temporal task used. Different tasks were used to investigate time perception but on many occasions, the authors provided no rationale for selecting a given task. Given the complexity of the temporal processes, it is critical to select the appropriate method because the measurement tools could highlight different aspects of temporal processing (Block, 1990, Mioni et al., 2013, Zakay, 1990). In the present study, we employed two timing tasks: time production and time reproduction. Time production is a suitable method to investigate individual differences at the level of the internal clock (Block et al., 1998, Meck, 1996, Rammsayer, 2001). For a given temporal interval, if the pacemaker runs slower an over-production is observed; conversely, if the internal clock runs faster an under-production would be observed (Block et al., 1998, Zakay, 1993). In time reproduction tasks, participants are required to reproduce the duration of the stimulus that was previously presented (standard duration). First, participants experience target duration and then are required to delimit a time period of the same length as the standard duration. In a time reproduction task, the temporal performance primarily depends on attention and working memory, rather than variation at the internal clock level (Block et al., 1998, Mioni et al., 2013, Mioni et al., 2014, Rammsayer, 2001, Zakay, 1990). In fact, the same clock speed is involved both when experiencing the target duration and during its reproduction. Therefore, in patients with cognitive dysfunctions we should observe lower temporal sensitivity caused by lower ability to attend to time and maintain a stable representation of the temporal information.

Whereas objective time progresses linearly and in constant units, the subjective experience of time can be affected by variations in external stimulation (Droit-Volet and Meck, 2007) and by the cognitive state of the subjects (Teixeira et al., 2013). However, how the sense of time is altered by the emotional and mental disorders is less understood (Buhusi and Meck, 2005, Gibbon et al., 1997). Several investigators have proposed that subjects who suffer anxiety and depressed disorders perceive time as passing faster or more slowly than do non-clinical subjects. However, it is not clear if this is caused by variations in the functioning of an internal clock or by differences in attentional resources dedicated to time or by working memory abilities (Grondin et al., 2006).

Anxiety could be defined as a temporary state of physiological excitability resulting from an external stimulus, or as a trait, which is a more stable characteristic linked to the individuals' personality. Both state and trait anxiety have been associated with deficits in attention-related cognitive performances (Eysenck, 1992). In particular, anxious patients present lower performances when a task requires a high level of attentional control (Eysenck, 1992, Mogg and Bradley, 1998, Sarason and Stoops, 1978, Williams et al., 1997). Whyman and Moos (1967) used a time production task (15, 30 and 90 s) with anxious patients (high and low anxiety levels). All participants under-produced temporal intervals and the discrepancy between objective and subjective time was greater in patients with high level compared to low level of anxiety. The authors suggested that patients with a high level of anxiety had a greater variation in their internal tempo (subjective time) than patients with a low level of anxiety. Also, Lueck (2007) explored the relationship between anxiety levels (high vs. low) and performance on a time estimation task. The level of anxiety was manipulated by the authors. Participants in the experimental group were instructed to give a talk in front of an audience, while participants in the control condition were the audience. Participants in the experimental group had time to practice their speech while participants in the control group could relax. All participants watched a recorded speech and were asked to verbally estimate its duration. Participants in the experimental condition showed a significantly higher anxiety state than the audience members. However, no significant difference in time estimation was found between groups although the anxious participants tended to report shorter values of the interval than did the non-anxious participants (Lueck, 2007). More recently, Bar-Haim et al. (2010) systematically investigated how arousal level and attentional deficits affect temporal perception in anxious patients with a time reproduction task (2, 4, and 8 s). Results showed that anxious patients over-estimated temporal intervals when the standard duration was 2 s and threatening stimuli were used, whereas there were no differences between groups at 4 or 8 s temporal intervals. Bar-Haim et al. (2010) argued that the threatening effect on duration briefer than 4 s are due to the arousal level caused by the stimuli, an effect that is not maintained sufficiently to result in over-estimations with longer intervals. The different findings observed in the previous studies can be explained by the different interval ranges and/or by the stimuli used for marking time (i.e. emotional stimuli). For example, Whyman and Moos (1967) used long intervals compared to Bar-Haim et al. (2010) and previous studies showed that longer temporal intervals are under-estimated (see Eisler, 1976, Eisler et al., 2008). Moreover, Bar-Haim et al. (2010) used emotional stimuli that affected temporal performance through increasing the arousal level with an effect on the speed of the internal clock. It is well-known that emotional stimuli (e.g., facial expressions) have an effect on temporal judgments (Angrilli et al., 1997, Droit-Volet and Meck, 2007), and that negatively valenced stimuli are perceived to last longer than positive or neutral stimuli due to an effect of the pacemaker's rate of pulses emission (Droit-Volet et al., 2004, Grondin et al., 2014, Mioni et al., 2015).

Depression is characterized by symptoms of a depressive mood indicated by the feeling of being sad or empty, as well as by a markedly diminished ability to take pleasure in things. Associated with these symptoms, there is also the feeling that time is passing more slowly than normal (see Thönes and Oberfeld, 2015 for e recent meta-analysis). The studies investigating temporal dysfunctions in depressed patients generally showed that clinical levels of depression are associated with the magnitude of disturbances in time experience, which are usually experienced as a feeling of time passing more slowly than usual (Blewett, 1992, Hawkins et al., 1988, Kuhs et al., 1989, Münzel et al., 1988, Richter and Benzenhöfer, 1985, Sévigny et al., 2003). The observation that depressed patients frequently report to perceive time as going slower can be explained, according to the SET model, by a variation at the level of the pacemaker (Gibbon et al., 1984) and by the fact that their internal clock is hypothesised to run faster than non-depressed subjects (Thönes and Oberfeld, 2015). Therefore, using a time production task, which is expect to detect variation at the pacemaker, if the internal clock runs faster, the pulses reach the accumulator within a specified interval in briefer time and the interval is produced as shorter compared to a subject with a slower clock speed.

Also using the production and the reproduction of temporal intervals in the range of few seconds, Oberfeld et al. (2014) showed similar performance between depressed patients and controls in time production and reproduction tasks and a main effect of duration indicating higher relative errors when a short standard interval of 500 ms was presented compared to 2 s or 60 s standard durations. The results can be explained by impairment in the motor action required to perform the time production and reproduction tasks rather than by a dysfunction at the level of the internal clock. Considering the psychomotor component in these tasks, producing or reproducing brief temporal intervals can be more affected by the motor dysfunction than producing or reproducing longer temporal intervals (Mioni et al., 2014). However, Bschor et al. (2004) using time production task (7, 35 and 90 s) showed that depressed patients overestimate the longest temporal intervals (90 s) more than controls. Moreover, Münzel et al. (1988) showed that the content of the interval and the experimental setting are critical factors. Compared to the controls, high depressed patients over-estimated the rest period when they were left unoccupied and over-estimated intervals filled with the picture without speed requirements. Using time discrimination task, Sévigny et al. (2003), showed that the difference in time discrimination performance between depressed and control groups depended on the length of the intervals to be processed. For brief durations (80 vs. 120 ms, and 450 vs. 550 ms), there was no difference between groups but for longer intervals (1120 vs. 1280 ms), the discrimination of depressed participants was poorer. As well, the variability of 1- or 10-s interval productions made with continuous series of finger taps was higher for the depressed than for the control group. Similar results were observed in Msetfi et al. (2012) who used a time discrimination task with short (<300 ms) and long (>1000 ms) temporal intervals (Experiment 1A and B). The authors reported that depressed participants (university students assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory; Beck et al., 1996) were less able than controls to discriminate between longer durations but they were equally able to discriminate short intervals. Gil and Droit-Volet (2009) used a time bisection task to investigate variations in time perception as a function of depressive symptoms. Participants were required to judge if the stimulus presented corresponded to the short standard (400 ms) or to the long standard (1600 ms). The results indicated similar sensitivity to time, but depressed patients showed a higher bisection point, compared to controls, indicating that depressed patients perceived time as shorter than the duration of the stimulus present.

Taken together previous studies showed mixed results. In some studies, depressed patients showed lower temporal abilities compared to controls whereas in other studies, the two groups did not differed. These mixed results are confirmed by a recent meta-analysis conducted by Thönes and Oberfeld (2015). After a review of studies on the question, these authors concluded that there is no effect of depression on temporal processing. However, when the temporal range was introduced by Thönes and Oberfeld as covariate, they found a tendency toward over-productions of short temporal intervals and under-productions of long temporal intervals, but only for time production task. When temporal dysfunction in depressed patients was observed, it was explained by attentional reduction (Msetfi et al., 2012; see also Rammsayer, 1990) and/or by a variation of the pacemaker rate (Gil and Droit-Volet, 2009).

In the present study, we investigate time perception in groups of anxious and depressed patients and non-clinical subjects. Particular attention is dedicated on the temporal tasks used that were performed with the same temporal intervals (500, 1000 and 1500 ms). Interestingly, by employing two different temporal tasks (time reproduction and time production tasks), we can further investigate the cause of temporal dysfunction in anxious and depressed patients. In fact, a time reproduction task recruits attention and working memory to keep active the reference duration in order to subsequently reproduce it. Conversely, the time production task requires other cognitive processes (i.e., language processing, access to long-term memory) and is considered to be a better task to detect variations at the internal clock level (Block et al., 1998, Mioni et al., 2013). Both tasks require a motor action to produce and reproduce the temporal intervals after the presentation of the target duration. In the case of time production, the task requires a transition between objective and subjective time, whereas in a time reproduction task, the temporal interval is physically presented for an objective duration that has to be actively maintained in memory to be subsequently reproduced (Block, 1990, Mioni et al., 2013, Mioni et al., 2014).

Based on previous studies (Block et al., 1998, Mioni et al., 2013), specific predictions can be made about performance in time reproduction and time production tasks. If cognitive resources are impaired, less cognitive resources can be dedicated to the temporal task. Because of the attentional deficit of anxious patients, the intervals reproduced by the anxious patients should be shorter than the ones of the depressed patients or of the controls (Mioni et al., 2013). In the case of time production task, if depressed patients have a faster pacemaker rate, they should produce shorter intervals than healthy participants (Block et al., 1998).

Moreover, the design of the present experiment also involves the use of two finger tapping tasks, one simple reaction time task and one verbal fluency task. The tapping tasks were introduced to control for spontaneous tempo and 1-s tempo, and the two other tasks controlled for processing speed and executive functions, respectively.

Section snippets

Participants

Twenty patients (male=6) suffering from anxiety, 18 depressed patients (male=7) and 28 controls (male=12) participated in the study. Patients were recruited at “Azienda Provinciale per i Servizi Sanitari” of Trento (Italy), at “Centro di Salute Mentale” of Trento (Italy) and at “Villa Margherita” of Arcugnano, Vicenza (Italy). Anxious and depressed patients were selected by the doctors according their clinical records. The Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory scale (STAI-X2; Spielberger

AE

The mean AE for time reproduction and time production tasks are reported in Fig. 1. The rmANOVA conducted on AE revealed main effects of group [F(2,63)=5.29, p=0.008, η2p=0.144], indicating that patients were less accurate than controls (depressed patients M=0.48, SD=0.32; anxious patients M=0.49, SD=0.28; controls M=0.33, SD=0.16); of temporal tasks [F(2,63)=34.18, p<0.001, η2p=0.352], indicating that participants were less accurate when performing the time production task (mean AE=0.54, SD

Discussion

The present study was conducted to investigate differences in temporal performances in anxious and depressed patients and to investigate the cause (variations in attention or at the internal clock level) of temporal dysfunctions in these patients. In fact, the subjective experience of time is different in these patients and subjects who suffer anxiety and depressed disorders perceive time as passing faster or more slowly than do non-clinical subjects. Anxiety has been associated with deficits

Contributors

The first author wrote the paper and the other authors equally contributed.

Role of funding source

There are no financial or other relationships that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest affecting this manuscript. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgement

The information in this manuscript and the manuscript itself has never been published either electronically or in print. There are no financial or other relationships that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest affecting this manuscript. This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. Data were presented at the Workshop “Conscious experience of time: its significance and interpretation in neuroscience and philosophy” organized by

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