When creativity changes time experiences: Semantic exploration shapes speech production and temporal processing

Creative engagement is associated with distorted experiences of time, yet the cognitive basis remains unknown. In particular, it is unclear how balancing broad associative exploration with task-relevant constraints during idea generation shapes prospective duration perception and subjective passage of time. Here, 31 participants generated spoken sentences from prompt word triplets under conventional, creative, or unconventional instructions while producing target intervals (10 or 20 s). Electrodermal activity and cardiac photoplethysmography were recorded throughout. After each trial, participants completed ratings assessing their subjective temporal accuracy and passage of time. Results showed that creative generation was characterized by broader within-response semantic range and reduced contextual uncertainty, reflecting a balance between conceptual divergence and structural coherence. Creativity was also associated with greater temporal overproduction and absolute proportional error, whereas unconventionality improved temporal precision without a directional bias. The coefficient of variation showed no significant condition effect, indicating no detectable differences in relative trial-to-trial variability. Exploratory multilevel mediation revealed an indirect association between semantic range and temporal overproduction through speech duration, implicating verbal production dynamics in the relationship between semantic exploration and timing. Subjective passage of time was faster in creative and unconventional conditions compared to conventional, dissociating subjective temporal experience from prospective interval production. Physiologically, creative generation reduced phasic electrodermal activity, whereas unconventionality increased tonic skin conductance. Across trials, higher heart rate and phasic electrodermal activity were associated with shorter produced intervals. Overall, these findings reveal that temporal experience during creative thought reflects distinct contributions from embodied speech production dynamics and internal autonomic pacing.