scholarly journals Anticipation of aversive visual stimuli lengthens perceived temporal duration

Author(s):  
Ville Johannes Harjunen ◽  
Michiel Spapé ◽  
Niklas Ravaja

AbstractSubjective estimates of elapsed time are sensitive to the fluctuations in an emotional state. While it is well known that dangerous and threatening situations, such as electric shocks or loud noises, are perceived as lasting longer than safe events, it remains unclear whether anticipating a threatening event speeds up or slows down subjective time and what defines the direction of the distortion. We examined whether the anticipation of uncertain visual aversive events resulted in either underestimation or overestimation of perceived duration. The participants did a temporal bisection task, where they estimated durations of visual cues relative to previously learnt long and short standard durations. The colour of the to-be-timed visual cue signalled either a 50% or 0% probability of encountering an aversive image at the end of the interval. The cue durations were found to be overestimated due to anticipation of aversive images, even when no image was shown afterwards. Moreover, the overestimation was more pronounced in people who reported feeling more anxious while anticipating the image. These results demonstrate that anxiogenic anticipation of uncertain visual threats induce temporal overestimation, which questions a recently proposed view that temporal underestimation evoked by uncertain threats is due to anxiety.

i-Perception ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 204166951876062
Author(s):  
Shuhei Shima ◽  
Yuki Murai ◽  
Kenichi Yuasa ◽  
Yuki Hashimoto ◽  
Yuko Yotsumoto

In recent years, several studies have reported that the allocation of spatial attention fluctuates periodically. This periodic attention was revealed by measuring behavioral performance as a function of cue-to-target interval in the Posner cueing paradigm. Previous studies reported behavioral oscillations using target detection tasks. Whether the influence of periodic attention extends to cognitively demanding tasks remains unclear. To assess this, we examined the effects of periodic attention on the perception of duration. In the experiment, participants performed a temporal bisection task while a cue was presented with various cue-to-target intervals. Perceived duration fluctuated rhythmically as a function of cue-to-target interval at a group level but not at an individual level when the target was presented on the same side as the attentional cue. The results indicate that the perception of duration is influenced by periodic attention. In other words, periodic attention can influence the performance of cognitively demanding tasks such as the perception of duration.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feiming Li ◽  
Lei Wang ◽  
Lei Jia ◽  
Jiahao Lu ◽  
Youping Wu ◽  
...  

Previous research has demonstrated that duration of implied motion (IM) was dilated, whereas hMT+ activity related to perceptual processes on IM stimuli could be modulated by their motion coherence. Based on these findings, the present study aimed to examine whether subjective time perception of IM stimuli would be influenced by varying coherence levels. A temporal bisection task was used to measure the subjective experience of time, in which photographic stimuli showing a human moving in four directions (left, right, toward, or away from the viewer) were presented as probe stimuli. The varying coherence of these IM stimuli was manipulated by changing the percentage of pictures implying movement in one direction. Participants were required to judge whether the duration of probe stimulus was more similar to the long or short pre-presented standard duration. As predicted, the point of subjective equality was significantly modulated by the varying coherence of the IM stimuli, but not for no-IM stimuli. This finding suggests that coherence level might be a key mediating factor for perceived duration of IM images, and top-down perceptual stream from inferred motion could influence subjective experience of time perception.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-163
Author(s):  
Alexander Varakin ◽  
Amanda Renfro ◽  
Jason Hays

AbstractThe current experiments examined whether non-temporal associations can affect duration judgments without affecting the rate of subjective time. In both experiments, participants performed a temporal bisection task, judging on each trial whether stimulus’ duration was closer to pre-learned short or long standards. In each experiment, the spatial compatibility between stimuli and responses was manipulated. In both experiments, stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) affected duration judgments: stimuli that were spatially compatible with the key used for long judgments elicited long responses at shorter objective durations than stimuli that were compatible with the key used for short judgments. The size of SRC’s effect did not depend on the magnitude of the standard durations and SRC’s effect was magnified even when SRC was introduced after the relevant temporal interval had ended. Thus, these findings are consistent with the idea that duration judgments can be affected without influencing the rate at which subjective time passes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Jia ◽  
Bingjie Shao ◽  
Xiaocheng Wang ◽  
Zhuanghua Shi

Intuitive moral emotions play a major role in forming our opinions and moral decisions. However, it is not yet known how we perceive the subjective time of moral-related information. In this study, we compared subjective durations of phrases depicting immoral, disgust, or neutral behaviors in a duration bisection task and found that phrases depicting immoral behavior were perceived as lasting longer than the neutral and disgusting phrases. By contrast, the subjective duration of the disgusting phrase, unlike the immoral phrase, was comparable to the neutral phrase. Moreover, the lengthening effect of the immoral phrase relative to the neutral phrase was significantly correlated to the anonymously prosocial tendency of the observer. Our findings suggest that immoral phrases induce embodied moral reaction, which alters emotional state and subsequently lengthens subjective time.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Cambraia ◽  
Marco Vasconcelos ◽  
Jérémie Jozefowiez ◽  
Armando Machado

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Hallez ◽  
Sylvie Droit-Volet

The aim of this study was to identify the age at which parameters of timing performance in a temporal bisection task converge on an adult-like stable level. Participants in the three- to 20-year-old range were tested using a temporal bisection task with sub-second and supra-second durations. The data were divided into two samples. In the first sample, all participants were integrated into the analysis regardless of their success. In the second sample, only performers were inserted. The point of subjective equality (PSE) and the Weber Ratio (WR) were analyzed for each participant in each sample. By fitting a mathematical model to these parameters as a function of age, we showed a large inter-individual variability in the PSE, such that it does not stabilize with increasing age, i.e., during the significant period of development. Interestingly, time sensitivity (WR) shows a similar pattern through the two samples as adult-like performance appeared at an earlier age for short than for long durations. For the first sample, the modeling of WR data suggests that the children reached an adult-like time sensitivity at the age of six years for the short durations and 8½ years for the long durations. For the second sample, the developmental curve was stable at about the same age for the long duration (seven years), and at earlier age for the short durations, i.e., before three years.


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