Memory, attention, and estimation of time

Our experiments investigated the involvement of working memory and attention in time estimation. Healthy subjects performing a verbal time estimation task either alone or with a concurrent working memory or attentional secondary task were compared with three global amnesic patients performing the time task alone. Results showed that accuracy of performance in healthy subjects was markedly poorer when the secondary task involved working memory, paralleling a pronounced underestimation of time intervals in amnesic patients. No such effect was observed when the secondary task involved attention