Characteristics of the Perception of Short Time Intervals

We report here a number of characteristics of the perception of short time intervals by humans (duration up to 3 sec). A short range of time intervals was assessed using a large set of durations (50) differing from each other by a small amount (0.06 sec). This provided the first identification of the structure of the subjective scales by which subjects evaluate the durations of time intervals in the range studied. Analysis of the distribution of the standard deviations of evaluations of interval durations showed that these scales were discontinuous and could include only eight gradations, and this was supported by an additional series of experiments.