Duration judgments in children and adolescents with and without mild intellectual disability.

Background: While the ability to measure time correctly is crucial for adaptation to the external physical and social environment, to date, research on timing ability and its development in individuals with intellectual disability (ID) is unfortunately remarkably scarce.

Aims: In the present study, we investigated the ability of individuals with mild ID to estimate durations and the development of this ability from 11 to 19 years, in comparison to typically developing (TD) individuals.

Methods And Procedures: Participants with mild ID and TD participants matched on chronological age completed two temporal tasks: (1) a temporal bisection of auditory stimuli, in which they had to decide whether arbitrary stimulus duration was more similar to the short (200 ms) or the long (800 ms) standard previously learned, and (2) a temporal categorization of familiar actions, in which short, medium or long target durations had to be paired with one of three comparison action durations.