Working memory for time intervals: Another manifestation of the central tendency effect

The relationship between working memory and time perception has been typically investigated using dual-task paradigms (e.g., testing timing performance during a concurrent task). To my knowledge, none of them used time intervals as the target stimulus to be remembered. The current study investigated the working memory for time intervals by asking participants to reproduce durations they experienced at different orders in a series of experienced intervals (n-back task). One of the experiments was conducted online and the other one in the lab setting. Results showed a central tendency bias and additive elongation of time reproductions with increasing working memory load. The results also showed that participants gave different weights to experienced intervals based on their order of presentation (higher weight to the target interval). I conclude that the recall of intervals from working memory under high cognitive load leads to a central tendency effect, which is known to be induced by temporal context and present particularly in aging and Parkinson's disease.