Time reproduction during high and low attentional tasks in Alzheimer's Disease. "A watched kettle never boils"

Abstract

A wealth of empirical evidence suggests that directing attention to temporal processing increases perceived duration, whereas drawing attention away from it has the opposite effect. Our work investigates this phenomenon by comparing perceived duration during a high attentional and a low attentional task in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) patients since these participants tend to show attentional deficits. In the high attentional task, AD patients and older adults were asked to perform the interference condition of the Stroop test for 15s while in the low attentional task, they had to fixate on a cross for the same length of time. In both conditions, participants were not aware they would be questioned about timing until the end of the task when they had to reproduce the duration of the previously-viewed stimulus. AD patients under-reproduced the duration of previously-exposed stimulus in the high attentional relative to the low attentional task, and the same pattern was observed in older adults. Due to their attentional deficits, AD patients might be overwhelmed by the demand of the high attentional task, leaving very few, if any, attentional resources for temporal processing.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s Disease; Attention; Perceived duration; Time perception; Time reproduction.