Exploring How 5-Second-Long Music Causes Waiting Time to be Perceived as Shorter or Longer
Author(s)
Harada, Nao
Komatsu, Takanori
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to:
Permanent Link
Abstract
Although the processing speed of computers and the data transmission speed of the internet have been drastically increasing year by year, users still have to wait for computers to complete tasks or to respond. To avoid such user discomfort while waiting, we have considered presenting short pieces of music to make users perceive their waiting time as being shorter. In this paper, we explored 5-second-long pieces of short music that can make users perceive their waiting time as being shorter or longer. We prepared eight pieces of 5-second-long music with different numbers of musical elements (i.e., numbers and range of notes, complexity of rhythm), and we conducted an experiment in which they were presented to participants, who were asked to indicate which short piece of music they felt was longer or shorter compared with the others in a paired comparison fashion. The results showed that the waiting time with music with small numbers of musical elements was perceived by the participants as being shorter, while that with large numbers was perceived as longer.
Sponsor
Date
2025-06
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Proceedings
Rights Statement
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)