Hypnotic time perception: busy beaver or tardy timekeeper?

Experimental participants were asked to make prospective and retrospective time judgements, for both brief and longer periods of time. It was found that when these tasks were performed in hypnosis, prospective estimates became longer than the actual time period, whereas retrospective judgements became shorter than actual. The effects were the same, whether the periods involved were brief or long. It is proposed that this pattern of results is not satisfactorily explained by the ‘Busy Beaver’ hypothesis (St Jean, McInnes, Campbell‐Mayne and Swainson, 1994). These results are better accounted for by assuming that time judgements are derived from an internal clock, which runs slow during hypnosis. An absence of any effect of hypnosis upon critical flicker fusion (CFF) frequency is taken to rule out a simple physiological explanation for the slow clock. Instead, a tentative account is offered that links the timing effects with recent research in the areas of brain mapping, hallucinations and reality monitoring. Copyright © 2001 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis