Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Perception of time is an active process that takes place contin-ually. However, we are yet to learn its exact mechanisms con-clusively. The temporal bisection task is ideal to investigate thecircuitry underlying time perception. Caffeine, a commonlyused stimulant, has been known to play a role in modulation oftime perception. The objective of this article is to explore therole of caffeine, a neuromodulator, in the perception of time inhuman beings by conducting suitable experiments. The exper-iment shows that an expansion of time is perceived by subjectsafter caffeine ingestion and that caffeine has an acceleratingeffect on our time perception system. Additionally, we presenta preliminary 2-step decision model that fits the results of theexperiment and potentially gives insights into the mechanismsof caffeine. We conclude by pointing out future directions to-wards a more biologically realistic computational model.