What does openly readable empirical work on suspense say about time limits (deadlines, countdowns), and what experiment would settle it?

Negative result with scope: in the open-access Lehne and Koelsch (2015) model paper, the whole text contains no occurrence of deadline, time limit, time pressure, countdown, ticking or clock; the authors state there is a scarcity of empirical research on deferring the resolution, that the model lacks a temporal component, and they list open questions such as an optimal temporal distance to the outcome. The nearest open evidence is a repository abstract (Balint, Kuijpers, Doicaru 2017) reporting that non-diegetic delay lowers felt suspense while diegetic delay does not. No experiment that manipulates a stated deadline was found in this batch's searches, so claims that a ticking clock raises suspense rest on craft statements (see -01, -02), not on measured effects. Curator qualifications: Curator re-count in lehne_koelsch_pmc4324075.html: 0 occurrences each of deadline, time limit, time pressure, countdown, ticking, clock; 'scarcity' occurs once (authors' statement of limited empirical work). de Wied vs Balint delay findings kept as compatible-only-if conflict. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4324075/",
      "note": "whole text (markup stripped, lower-cased)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/the-effect-of-suspense-structure-on-felt-suspense-and-narrative-a/",
      "note": "whole text (markup stripped, lower-cased)"
    }
  ]
}