Previous research has consistently reported that pain related stimuli are perceived as lasting longer than non-pain related ones, suggesting that pain lengthens subjective time. However, to date, the investigation has been limited to the immediate effects of pain on time perception. The current study aims to investigate whether pain affects how a duration is recalled after a period of delay. In two experiments, participants were asked to complete four temporal generalisation tasks, where they were required first to remember the duration of a standard tone (learning phase) and then to compare the standard duration to a series of comparison durations (testing phase). Using a 2 × 2 design, the four tasks differed in terms of whether participants were exposed to a painful or non-painful stimulus during the learning phase, and whether the testing phase started immediately or 15 min after the learning phase. Participants were exposed to low pain in Experiment 1 and high pain in Experiment 2. Two possible results were expected: pain could decrease temporal accuracy, because pain disrupts cognitive processes required for accurate timing, or pain could increase temporal accuracy, because pain facilitates memory consolidation. Contrary to expectations, results from both Experiments indicated that participants’ temporal performances were similar in the pain and no-pain conditions when testing occurred 15 min after the learning phase. Findings, therefore, suggest that pain neither disrupts nor enhances long-term memory representations of duration.

先前的研究一直报告说，与疼痛相关的刺激被认为比非疼痛相关的刺激持续时间更长，这表明疼痛会延长主观时间。然而，迄今为止，调查仅限于即时疼痛对时间知觉的影响。目前的研究旨在调查疼痛是否会影响在一段延迟后回忆持续时间的方式。在两个实验中，参与者被要求完成四项时间概括任务，其中要求他们首先记住标准音调的持续时间（学习阶段），然后将标准持续时间与一系列比较持续时间（测试阶段）进行比较。使用 2 × 2 设计，这四项任务的不同之处在于参与者在学习阶段是否受到疼痛或非疼痛刺激，以及测试阶段是立即开始还是在学习阶段后 15 分钟开始。参与者在实验 1 中暴露于低疼痛，在实验 2 中暴露于高疼痛。预计有两种可能的结果：疼痛会降低时间准确性，因为疼痛会扰乱准确计时所需的认知过程，或者疼痛可以提高时间准确性，因为疼痛有助于记忆巩固。与预期相反，两个实验的结果表明，在学习阶段后 15 分钟进行测试时，参与者在疼痛和无痛条件下的时间表现相似。因此，研究结果表明，疼痛既不会破坏也不会增强持续时间的长期记忆表征。