Anxiety, Temporal Estimation, and Rate of Counting

Fifty-one nursing students were asked to estimate the lengths of 5- and 20-sec. intervals under two conditions: with instructions not to count and with instructions to count to themselves. Significant negative correlations were obtained between MAS scores and the estimation of the 20-sec. intervals, while correlations with the estimates of the 5-sec. intervals were negative but not significant. Although these results are inconsistent with previous findings, an attempt was made to interpret them in terms of the utilization of cues relevant to the passage of time.