Across the great divide : animal psychology and timing in humans

A substantial proportion of current research on the experimental psychology of time is conducted with animals, and a large body of data and theory derived from animal studies has been collected. Commentators disagree about how useful such data and theories are for understanding human timing. The paper discusses advantages and limitations of animal studies. The limitations are (i) some human timing phenomena are outside the scope of investigations with animals, for both psychological and methodological reasons, and (ii) even when data from humans and animals are similar there is no guarantee of similarity of psychological processes. Nevertheless, some striking examples of the fruitfulness of animal/human timing comparisons have been found in areas of interval production, judgements of stimulus duration, and memory for duration.