title: Changing rates of reinforcement perturbs the flow of time.
abstract: This experiment tested the hypothesis that changes in rate of reinforcement affect the rate of an internal pacemaker as suggested by the Behavioral Theory of Timing (BeT: Killeen and Fetterman, 1988). Pigeons were trained to discriminate durations of 10 s and 20 s, and then exposed to higher or lower rates of freely delivered reinforcers. When returned to the discrimination task, judgments were reliably biased in the predicted directions: those returning from a richer context judged standard durations to be longer than did those returning from a poorer context. These results validate a key assumption of BeT, and provide an explanation of how changing tempos of life bias the perception of time.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Morgan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA.
authors.forename: P R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Killeen
authors.affiliation: Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.
authors.forename: J G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Fetterman