A Directional Congruency Effect of Amplified Dilated Time Perception Induced by Looming Stimuli With Implied Motion Cues

2021 ◽  
Vol 128 (2) ◽  
pp. 585-604
Author(s):  
Joohee Seo ◽  
Euisun Kim ◽  
Sung-Ho Kim

The perception of time is not veridical, but, rather, it is susceptible to environmental context, like the intrinsic dynamics of moving stimuli. The direction of motion has been reported to affect time perception such that movement of objects toward an observer (i.e., looming stimuli) is perceived as longer in duration than movement of objects away from the observer (i.e., receding stimuli). In the current study we investigated whether this looming/receding temporal asymmetry can be modulated by the direction of movement implied by static cues of images. Participants were presented with images of a running person, rendered from either the front or the back (i.e., representing movement toward or away from the observer). In Experiment 1, the size of the images was constant. In Experiment 2, the image sizes varied (i.e., increasing: looming; or decreasing: receding). In both experiments, participants performed a temporal bisection task by judging the duration of the image presentation as “short” or “long”. In Experiment 1, we found no influence of implied-motion direction in the participants’ duration perceptions. In Experiment 2, however, participants overestimated the duration of the looming, as compared to the receding image in relation to real motion. This finding replicated previous findings of the looming/receding asymmetry using naturalistic human-character stimuli. Further, in Experiment 2 we observed a directional congruency effect between real and implied motion; stimuli were perceived as lasting longer when the directions of real and implied motion were congruent versus when these directions were incongruent. Thus, looming (versus receding) movement, a perceptually salient stimulus, elicits differential temporal processing, and higher-order motion processing integrates signals of real and implied motion in time perception.

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 926-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michiel van Elk ◽  
Mark Rotteveel

AbstractThe effects of emotion on time perception are elusive: depending on the intensity, valence and arousal of the situation, implicit and explicit time perception seems to slow down or speed up. Awe is a strong and powerful positive emotion that is typically elicited in response to vast stimuli and therefore inducing awe may be optimally suited for studying the relationship between emotion and time perception. In two studies we investigated whether the experience of awe would result in an expanded perception of time. Participants watched awe-eliciting, positive and neutral videos and simultaneously conducted a temporal bisection task, in which they classified vibrotactile stimuli as short or long. As expected awe videos elicited stronger feelings of awe than positive and control videos, while they were matched with positive videos in terms of subjective valence and arousal. However across both studies we did not find consistent effects of awe on implicit and retrospective time perception. Only in the first study, stronger subjective feelings of awe were associated with an increased dilation of time perception. The current findings indicate that lab-induced awe does not affect implicit and explicit time perception and we suggest that more ecologically valid ways to induce awe may be required in future studies.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Rhodes

Time is a fundamental dimension of human perception, cognition and action, as the perception and cognition of temporal information is essential for everyday activities and survival. Innumerable studies have investigated the perception of time over the last 100 years, but the neural and computational bases for the processing of time remains unknown. First, we present a brief history of research and the methods used in time perception and then discuss the psychophysical approach to time, extant models of time perception, and advancing inconsistencies between each account that this review aims to bridge the gap between. Recent work has advocated a Bayesian approach to time perception. This framework has been applied to both duration and perceived timing, where prior expectations about when a stimulus might occur in the future (prior distribution) are combined with current sensory evidence (likelihood function) in order to generate the perception of temporal properties (posterior distribution). In general, these models predict that the brain uses temporal expectations to bias perception in a way that stimuli are ‘regularized’ i.e. stimuli look more like what has been seen before. Evidence for this framework has been found using human psychophysical testing (experimental methods to quantify behaviour in the perceptual system). Finally, an outlook for how these models can advance future research in temporal perception is discussed.


Cephalalgia ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 31 (11) ◽  
pp. 1199-1210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn E Webster ◽  
J Edwin Dickinson ◽  
Josephine Battista ◽  
Allison M McKendrick ◽  
David R Badcock

Aim: This study aimed to revisit previous findings of superior processing of motion direction in migraineurs with a more stringent direction discrimination task and to investigate whether increased internal noise can account for motion processing deficits in migraineurs. Methods: Groups of 13 migraineurs (4 with aura, 9 without aura) and 15 headache-free controls completed three psychophysical tasks: one detecting coherence in a motion stimulus, one discriminating the spiral angle in a glass pattern and another discriminating the spiral angle in a global-motion task. Internal noise estimates were obtained for all tasks using an N-pass method. Results: Consistent with previous research, migraineurs had higher motion coherence thresholds than controls. However, there were no significant performance differences on the spiral global-motion and global-form tasks. There was no significant group difference in internal noise estimates associated with any of the tasks. Conclusions: The results from this study suggest that variation in internal noise levels is not the mechanism driving motion coherence threshold differences in migraine. Rather, we argue that motion processing deficits may result from cortical changes leading to less efficient extraction of global-motion signals from noise.


Author(s):  
Agnieszka Sowa

Sztuka czekania – percepcja czasu w powieści Mogador (2016) Martina Mosebacha Powieść Martina Mosebacha Mogador konfrontuje dwie kultury. Bohater – młody, odnoszący sukcesy pracownik banku z Niemiec – musi spędzić kilka tygodni w Maroku wśród jego mieszkańców. Musi zmierzyć się z obcymi zwyczajami i innym rytmem życia ludzi, którzy wydają się mieć znacznie więcej czasu i nie muszą poddawać się jego presji. W artykule skupiono się na przedstawieniach percepcji czasu (np. w czasie wolnym, w trakcie posiłków czy oczekiwania), która wydaje się jedną z najważniejszych różnic pomiędzy kulturą europejską a marokańską. Artykuł ma na celu opisanie ludzkiej tęsknoty za godnym przeżywaniem czasu, za tzw. slow life, która wydaje się pragnieniem ukrytym pod niepokojem i szybkością współczesnego świata. Art of Waiting – Perception of Time in Martin Mosebach’s Novel Mogador (2016) Martin Mosebach’s novel Mogador confronts two cultures; the protagonist, a young, successful, German bank employee must spend some weeks in Morocco among the locals. He has to deal with foreign customs and another rhythm of life among people who seem to have much more time and don’t have to subject themselves to the pressure of the clock. The article focuses on the depictions of time perception (e.g. during leisure time, meals, waiting, etc.), which seems to be one of the most important differences between them. The article aims to describe the human longing for dignified handling of time, for slow life, which seems to be a yearning hidden under the anxiety and speed of the modern world.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nardin Nakhla ◽  
Yavar Korkian ◽  
Matthew R. Krause ◽  
Christopher C. Pack

AbstractThe processing of visual motion is carried out by dedicated pathways in the primate brain. These pathways originate with populations of direction-selective neurons in the primary visual cortex, which project to dorsal structures like the middle temporal (MT) and medial superior temporal (MST) areas. Anatomical and imaging studies have suggested that area V3A might also be specialized for motion processing, but there have been very few studies of single-neuron direction selectivity in this area. We have therefore performed electrophysiological recordings from V3A neurons in two macaque monkeys (one male and one female) and measured responses to a large battery of motion stimuli that includes translation motion, as well as more complex optic flow patterns. For comparison, we simultaneously recorded the responses of MT neurons to the same stimuli. Surprisingly, we find that overall levels of direction selectivity are similar in V3A and MT and moreover that the population of V3A neurons exhibits somewhat greater selectivity for optic flow patterns. These results suggest that V3A should be considered as part of the motion processing machinery of the visual cortex, in both human and non-human primates.Significance statementAlthough area V3A is frequently the target of anatomy and imaging studies, little is known about its functional role in processing visual stimuli. Its contribution to motion processing has been particularly unclear, with different studies yielding different conclusions. We report a detailed study of direction selectivity in V3A. Our results show that single V3A neurons are, on average, as capable of representing motion direction as are neurons in well-known structures like MT. Moreover, we identify a possible specialization for V3A neurons in representing complex optic flow, which has previously been thought to emerge in higher-order brain regions. Thus it appears that V3A is well-suited to a functional role in motion processing.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manivannan Subramaniyan ◽  
Alexander S. Ecker ◽  
Saumil S. Patel ◽  
R. James Cotton ◽  
Matthias Bethge ◽  
...  

AbstractWhen the brain has determined the position of a moving object, due to anatomical and processing delays, the object will have already moved to a new location. Given the statistical regularities present in natural motion, the brain may have acquired compensatory mechanisms to minimize the mismatch between the perceived and the real position of a moving object. A well-known visual illusion — the flash lag effect — points towards such a possibility. Although many psychophysical models have been suggested to explain this illusion, their predictions have not been tested at the neural level, particularly in a species of animal known to perceive the illusion. Towards this, we recorded neural responses to flashed and moving bars from primary visual cortex (V1) of awake, fixating macaque monkeys. We found that the response latency to moving bars of varying speed, motion direction and luminance was shorter than that to flashes, in a manner that is consistent with psychophysical results. At the level of V1, our results support the differential latency model positing that flashed and moving bars have different latencies. As we found a neural correlate of the illusion in passively fixating monkeys, our results also suggest that judging the instantaneous position of the moving bar at the time of flash — as required by the postdiction/motion-biasing model — may not be necessary for observing a neural correlate of the illusion. Our results also suggest that the brain may have evolved mechanisms to process moving stimuli faster and closer to real time compared with briefly appearing stationary stimuli.New and NoteworthyWe report several observations in awake macaque V1 that provide support for the differential latency model of the flash lag illusion. We find that the equal latency of flash and moving stimuli as assumed by motion integration/postdiction models does not hold in V1. We show that in macaque V1, motion processing latency depends on stimulus luminance, speed and motion direction in a manner consistent with several psychophysical properties of the flash lag illusion.


2005 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 921-935 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Wittmann ◽  
Sandra Lehnhoff

Despite the widespread belief that the subjective speed of the passage of time increases with age, empirical results are controversial. In this study, a combination of questionnaires was employed to assess subjective time perception by 499 subjects, ages 14 to 94 years. Pearson correlations and nonlinear regression analyses on a variety of questionnaires and the age of the participants show that the momentary perception of the passage of time and the retrospective judgment of past periods of time are a function of chronological age; however, small-to-moderate effects accounted for at most 10% of the variance. Results generally support the widespread perception that the passage of time speeds up with age. These results are discussed in the context of models of prospective and retrospective time judgment, but interpretations have to be treated with caution given methodological limitations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 1542-1555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Schledde ◽  
F. Orlando Galashan ◽  
Magdalena Przybyla ◽  
Andreas K. Kreiter ◽  
Detlef Wegener

Nonspatially selective attention is based on the notion that specific features or objects in the visual environment are effectively prioritized in cortical visual processing. Feature-based attention (FBA), in particular, is a well-studied process that dynamically and selectively addresses neurons preferentially processing the attended feature attribute (e.g., leftward motion). In everyday life, however, behavior may require high sensitivity for an entire feature dimension (e.g., motion), but experimental evidence for a feature dimension-specific attentional modulation on a cellular level is lacking. Therefore, we investigated neuronal activity in macaque motion-selective mediotemporal area (MT) in an experimental setting requiring the monkeys to detect either a motion change or a color change. We hypothesized that neural activity in MT is enhanced when the task requires perceptual sensitivity to motion. In line with this, we found that mean firing rates were higher in the motion task and that response variability and latency were lower compared with values in the color task, despite identical visual stimulation. This task-specific, dimension-based modulation of motion processing emerged already in the absence of visual input, was independent of the relation between the attended and stimulating motion direction, and was accompanied by a spatially global reduction of neuronal variability. The results provide single-cell support for the hypothesis of a feature dimension-specific top-down signal emphasizing the processing of an entire feature class. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Cortical processing serving visual perception prioritizes information according to current task requirements. We provide evidence in favor of a dimension-based attentional mechanism addressing all neurons that process visual information in the task-relevant feature domain. Behavioral tasks required monkeys to attend either color or motion, causing modulations of response strength, variability, latency, and baseline activity of motion-selective monkey area MT neurons irrespective of the attended motion direction but specific to the attended feature dimension.


i-Perception ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 204166952093732
Author(s):  
Masahiko Terao ◽  
Shin’ya Nishida

Many studies have investigated various effects of smooth pursuit on visual motion processing, especially the effects related to the additional retinal shifts produced by eye movement. In this article, we show that the perception of apparent motion during smooth pursuit is determined by the interelement proximity in retinal coordinates and also by the proximity in objective world coordinates. In Experiment 1, we investigated the perceived direction of the two-frame apparent motion of a square-wave grating with various displacement sizes under fixation and pursuit viewing conditions. The retinal and objective displacements between the two frames agreed with each other under the fixation condition. However, the displacements differed by 180 degrees in terms of phase shift, under the pursuit condition. The proportions of the reported motion direction between the two viewing conditions did not coincide when they were plotted as a function of either the retinal displacement or of the objective displacement; however, they did coincide when plotted as a function of a mixture of the two. The result from Experiment 2 showed that the perceived jump size of the apparent motion was also dependent on both retinal and objective displacements. Our findings suggest that the detection of the apparent motion during smooth pursuit considers the retinal proximity and also the objective proximity. This mechanism may assist with the selection of a motion path that is more likely to occur in the real world and, therefore, be useful for ensuring perceptual stability during smooth pursuit.


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