Perception of short time scale intervals in a hypnotic virtuoso.

Previous studies showed that hypnotized individuals underestimate temporal intervals in the range of several seconds to tens of minutes. However, no previous work has investigated whether duration perception is equally disorderly when shorter time intervals are probed. In this study, duration perception of a hypnotic virtuoso was tested using repeated standard temporal generalization and duration estimation tasks. When compared to the baseline state, hypnosis affected perception of intervals spread around 600 ms in the temporal generalization task but did not alter perception of slightly longer intervals spread around 1000 ms. Furthermore, generalization of temporal intervals was more orderly under hypnosis than in the baseline state. In contrast, the hypnotic virtuoso showed a typical time underestimation effect when perception of longer supra-second intervals was tested in the duration estimation task, replicating results of the previous hypnosis studies.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2012 Jul;60(3):318-37. Noreika V, Falter CM, Arstila V, Wearden JH, Kallio S. Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Behavioural Sciences and Philosophy, University of Turku, Assistentinkatu 7, 20014 Turku, Finland. valnoreika@gmail.com