ABSTRACT
Sometimes the circumstances of life create very strong emotions that plunge us into particular states of mind or body states. We have the impression that time is somehow suspended. If we are to estimate the length of the period during which we find ourselves in such states, it may be that this estimate does not correspond exactly to the actual duration. For example, Loftus (1975) recalls that, in a court murder case, one defendant said that only two seconds elapsed between the grabbing of a gun and the first shot, whereas one witness said that five minutes had passed. These temporal estimations, tinged with the emotional burden of tragic events, were crucial because a short delay would indicate that the accused might have been under the influence of fear, while a longer delay suggests that other factors were likely at stake.
