Time Intervals Produced by Silent Chronometric Counting are Involuntarily Affected by Number Word Magnitudes

What is it about?

Chronometric counting is a way to estimate the length of a certain time interval by counting the number of one-second parts of this interval. The order of the number words is important for this counting, but it's unclear whether the magnitude of these words also involuntarily affects the estimate. In two experiments, the adult participants were asked to count silently in different directions and with number words of different magnitudes to produce certain lengths of time. The results showed that the participants showed produced longer time estimates with short intervals and, at a trend level, when counting downwards than upwards. Most importantly, they produced longer time estimates when they used high-magnitude number words compared to low-numbered ones. This suggests that our brain automatically associates the magnitude of number words with the length of time, even when there are no external stimuli to trigger the representations of these words directly.

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