A 100 ms tone burst sounds as long as a 400 ms pause does

Evidence

Tones of 3.2 kHz produce the largest effects while low-frequency tones of 200Hz, or white noise, produce less pronounced effects. Both show, however, strong deviations from the 45° line that indicates equality of the durations of the burst and the pause. The expected result, that subjective duration of a pause and subjective duration of a burst are equal, is true for physical durations larger than 1 s but is certainly not true for smaller physical durations. Using 3.2-kHz tones as the sound from which the bursts and the pauses are extracted, it can be seen from Fig. 12.2 that a burst duration of 100 ms produces the same subjective duration as a pause which actually lasts as long as 400 ms. The difference in this case is a factor of four! — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 1488

Categorization

• CANDY: A filled 100 ms interval feels as long as an empty 400 ms gap — a striking elevator fact about perception of time.
• QUESTION: Why does filling an interval compress its perceived duration by a factor of four at short timescales, and why does effect depend on frequency?