The aim of this study was to examine the factors that explain variations in the conscious experience of time. The level of difficulty of the task, emotional valence and duration of stimuli were tested in three different experiments with two ranges of durations, one of seconds and the other one of minutes. The results showed that the passage of time was judged faster with durations in the seconds than in the minutes range. However, for all duration values, each change in the features of the task produced changes in the judgment of the passage of time. The subjective feeling of an acceleration of the passage of time, therefore, increased linearly with the increase in the level of difficulty of the task and with the positive valence of the emotional stimuli. It also varied linearly with the length of real time, increasing in the same proportion as the decrease in stimulus duration, regardless of the associated range (seconds or minutes). Our theory is that the judgment of the passage of time might be a generic way of describing the most salient internal or external contextual changes experienced.

这项研究的目的是检查解释时间意识体验变化的因素。在三个不同的实验中测试了任务的难度水平、情绪效价和刺激的持续时间，其中有两个持续时间范围，一个是秒，另一个是分钟。结果表明，以秒为单位的持续时间比以分钟为单位的持续时间更快地判断时间的流逝。然而，对于所有持续时间值，任务特征的每一次变化都会产生对时间流逝的判断的变化。因此，时间流逝加速的主观感觉随着任务难度水平的增加和情绪刺激的正价而线性增加。它也随着实时的长度线性变化，无论相关范围（秒或分钟）如何，都以与刺激持续时间的减少相同的比例增加。我们的理论是，对时间流逝的判断可能是描述所经历的最显着的内部或外部上下文变化的通用方式。