The predominant use of temporal information in everyday life concerns behav
iour within the psychological present, which is said to have an upper limit
of approximately 3-5 s. The present study was designed to investigate age
differences in processing of temporal information within the psychological
present by applying three distinct psychophysical tasks with base durations
of I s. Forty young (mean age: 21.6 years) and forty older adults (mean ag
e: 70.4 years) were presented with a temporal discrimination task, a tempor
al reproduction task, and a repeated production task, Pronounced impairment
in older adults, as compared to young adults, was found for temporal discr
iminations. When asked to reproduce a 1-s target interval, young adults und
er-reproduced and older adults over-reproduced the target duration, but did
not differ in overall accuracy and intra-individual variability. Repeated
productions of a 1-s interval were unaffected by age. These findings are co
nsistent with the notion that older adults show impaired performance when s
timulus timing is required, whereas response timing is unaffected by ageing
.