Subjectivity of Time Perception: A Visual Emotional Orchestration

Consciousness and Cognition, 2011

Emotion modulates our time perception. So far, the relationship between emotion and time perception has been examined with visible emotional stimuli. The present study investigated whether invisible emotional stimuli affected time perception. Using continuous flash suppression, which is a kind of dynamic interocular masking, supra-threshold emotional pictures were masked or unmasked depending on whether the retinal position of continuous flashes on one eye was consistent with that of the pictures on the other eye. Observers were asked to reproduce the perceived duration of a frame stimulus that was concurrently presented with a masked or unmasked emotional picture. As a result, negative emotional stimuli elongated the perceived duration of the frame stimulus in comparison with positive and neutral emotional stimuli, regardless of the visibility of emotional pictures. These results suggest that negative emotion unconsciously accelerates an internal clock, altering time perception.► We tested whether invisible emotional stimuli affected time perception. ► Continuous flash suppression reduced the visibility of emotional pictures. ► Observers overestimated durations when the pictures induced negative emotion. ► This tendency was observed regardless of the visibility of the pictures. ► Unconscious emotional processing alters conscious time perception.

Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 2011

Previous research into emotion and time perception has been designed to study the time perception of emotional events themselves (e.g., facial expression). Our aim was to investigate the effect of emotions per se on the subsequent time judgment of a neutral, non-affective event. In the present study, the participants were presented with films inducing a specific mood and were subsequently given a temporal bisection task. More precisely, the participants were given two temporal bisection tasks, one before and the other after viewing the emotional film.Three emotional films were tested: one eliciting fear, another sadness, and a neutral control film. In addition, the direct mood experience was assessed using the Brief Mood Introspective Scale that was administered to the participants at the beginning and the end of the session. The results showed that the perception of time did not change after viewing either the neutral control films or the sad films although the participants reported being sadder and less aroused after than before watching the sad film clips. In contrast, the stimulus durations were judged longer after than before viewing the frightening films that were judged to increase the emotion of fear and arousal level. In combination with findings from previous studies, our data suggest that the selective lengthening effect after watching frightening films was mediated by an effect of arousal on the speed of the internal clock system.

Our sense of time is altered by our emotions to such an extent that time seems to fly when we are having fun and drags when we are bored. Recent studies using standardized emotional material provide a unique opportunity for understanding the neurocognitive mechanisms that underlie the effects of emotion on timing and time perception in the milliseconds-to-hours range. We outline how these new findings can be explained within the framework of internal-clock models and describe how emotional arousal and valence interact to produce both increases and decreases in attentional time sharing and clock speed. The study of time and emotion is at a crossroads, and we outline possible examples for future directions.

Japanese Psychological Research, 2016

We examined how impression (such as safety, pleasantness, and impact), as well as emotional arousal and valence, evoked by viewing a picture affects temporal resolution of visual processing and perceived picture duration. In the first experiment as an index of temporal resolution of visual processing, we measured the noticeable duration of a monochrome picture after presenting a color picture. In the second experiment, we measured the duration of the picture presentation, which was equivalent to the duration of the presentation of a gray rectangle that should not evoke specifically safe or pleasant impressions. We found that the minimum duration in which an observer could notice a monochrome image in viewing a dangerous picture was shorter than that in viewing safe pictures. We also found that observers overestimated the duration of the picture presentation in viewing dangerous pictures. However, there was no significant correlation between the results of the two experiments. These results suggest that the basis for improvement of the temporal resolution in visual processing differs from that for the elongation of the perceived duration.

Timing & Time Perception, 2013

The past few decades have seen an explosion in studies exploring the effects of emotion on time judgments. The aim of this review is to describe the results of these studies and to look at how they try to explain the time distortions produced by emotion. We begin by examining the findings on time judgments in affective disorders, which allow us to make a clear distinction between the feelings of time distortion that originate from introspection onto subjective personal experience, and the effects of emotion on the basic mechanisms involved in time perception. We then report the results of behavioral studies that have tested the effects of emotions on time perceptions and the temporal processing of different emotional stimuli (e.g. facial expressions, affective pictures or sounds). Finally, we describe our own studies of the embodiment of timing. Overall, the different results on time and emotion suggest that temporal distortions are an indicator of how our brain and body adapt to th...

Emotion, 2007

Emotional and neutral sounds rated for valence and arousal were used to investigate the influence of emotions on timing in reproduction and verbal estimation tasks with durations from 2 s to 6 s. Results revealed an effect of emotion on temporal judgment, with emotional stimuli judged to be longer than neutral ones for a similar arousal level. Within scalar expectancy theory (J. Gibbon, R. Church, & W. , this suggests that emotion-induced activation generates an increase in pacemaker rate, leading to a longer perceived duration. A further exploration of self-assessed emotional dimensions showed an effect of valence and arousal. Negative sounds were judged to be longer than positive ones, indicating that negative stimuli generate a greater increase of activation. High-arousing stimuli were perceived to be shorter than low-arousing ones. Consistent with attentional models of timing, this seems to reflect a decrease of attention devoted to time, leading to a shorter perceived duration. These effects, robust across the 2 tasks, are limited to short intervals and overall suggest that both activation and attentional processes modulate the timing of emotional events.

Frontiers in psychology, 2015

Emotion plays an essential role in the perception of time such that time is perceived to "fly" when events are enjoyable, while unenjoyable moments are perceived to "drag." Previous studies have reported a time-drag effect when participants are presented with emotional facial expressions, regardless of the emotion presented. This effect can hardly be explained by induced emotion given the heterogeneous nature of emotional expressions. We conducted two experiments (n = 44 and n = 39) to examine the cognitive mechanism underlying this effect by presenting dynamic sequences of emotional expressions to participants. Each sequence started with a particular expression, then morphed to another. The presentation of dynamic facial expressions allows a comparison between the time-drag effect of homogeneous pairs of emotional expressions sharing similar valence and arousal to heterogeneous pairs. Sequences of seven durations (400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600 ms) were p...

We examined how impression (such as safety, pleasantness, and impact), as well as emotional arousal and valence, evoked by viewing a picture affects temporal resolution of visual processing and perceived picture duration. In the first experiment as an index of temporal resolution of visual processing, we measured the noticeable duration of a monochrome picture after presenting a color picture. In the second experiment, we measured the duration of the picture presentation, which was equivalent to the duration of the presentation of a gray rectangle that should not evoke specifically safe or pleasant impressions. We found that the minimum duration in which an observer could notice a monochrome image in viewing a dangerous picture was shorter than that in viewing safe pictures. We also found that observers overestimated the duration of the picture presentation in viewing dangerous pictures. However, there was no significant correlation between the results of the two experiments. These results suggest that the basis for improvement of the temporal resolution in visual processing differs from that for the elongation of the perceived duration.

PloS one, 2011

Emotions change our perception of time. In the past, this has been attributed primarily to emotions speeding up an ''internal clock'' thereby increasing subjective time estimates. Here we probed this account using an S1/S2 temporal discrimination paradigm. Participants were presented with a stimulus (S1) followed by a brief delay and then a second stimulus (S2) and indicated whether S2 was shorter or longer in duration than S1. We manipulated participants' emotions by presenting a task-irrelevant picture following S1 and preceding S2. Participants were more likely to judge S2 as shorter than S1 when the intervening picture was emotional as compared to neutral. This effect held independent of S1 and S2 modality (Visual: Exps. 1, 2, & 3; Auditory: Exp. 4) and intervening picture valence (Negative: Exps. 1, 2 & 4; Positive: Exp. 3). Moreover, it was replicated in a temporal reproduction paradigm (Exp. 5) where a timing stimulus was preceded by an emotional or neutral picture and participants were asked to reproduce the duration of the timing stimulus. Taken together, these findings indicate that emotional experiences may decrease temporal estimates and thus raise questions about the suitability of internal clock speed explanations of emotion effects on timing. Moreover, they highlight attentional mechanisms as a viable alternative.

Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 2011

Experimental evidence suggests that emotions can both speed-up and slow-down the internal clock. Speeding up has been observed for to-be-timed emotional stimuli that have the capacity to sustain attention, whereas slowing down has been observed for to-be-timed neutral stimuli that are presented in the context of emotional distractors. These effects have been explained by mechanisms that involve changes in bodily arousal, attention, or sentience. A review of these mechanisms suggests both merits and difficulties in the explanation of the emotion-timing link. Therefore, a hybrid mechanism involving stimulus-specific sentient representations is proposed as a candidate for mediating emotional influences on time. According to this proposal, emotional events enhance sentient representations, which in turn support temporal estimates. Emotional stimuli with a larger share in ones sentience are then perceived as longer than neutral stimuli with a smaller share.

Brain Informatics

Background: Models of time perception share an element of scalar expectancy theory known as the internal clock, containing specific mechanisms by which the brain is able to experience time passing and function effectively. A debate exists about whether to treat factors that influence these internal clock mechanisms (e.g., emotion, personality, executive functions, and related neurophysiological components) as arousal-or attentional-based factors. Purpose: This study investigated behavioral and neurophysiological responses to an affective time perception Go/ NoGo task, taking into account the behavioral inhibition (BIS) and behavioral activation systems (BASs), which are components of reinforcement sensitivity theory. Methods: After completion of self-report inventories assessing personality traits, electroencephalogram (EEG/ERP) and behavioral recordings of 32 women and 13 men recruited from introductory psychology classes were completed during an affective time perception Go/NoGo task. This task required participants to respond (Go) and inhibit (NoGo) to positive and negative affective visual stimuli of various durations in comparison to a standard duration. Results: Higher BAS scores (especially BAS Drive) were associated with overestimation bias scores for positive stimuli, while BIS scores were not correlated with overestimation bias scores. Furthermore, higher BIS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during positive stimulus presentation for 280 ms, while higher BAS Total scores were associated with higher N2d amplitudes during negative stimuli presentation for 910 ms. Discussion: Findings are discussed in terms of arousal-based models of time perception, and suggestions for future research are considered.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2015

The aim of this study was to investigate if and how temporal context influences subjective affective responses to emotional images. To do so, we examined whether the subjective evaluation of a target image is influenced by the valence of its preceding image, and/or its overall position in a sequence of images. Furthermore, we assessed if these potentially confounding contextual effects can be moderated by a common procedural control: randomized stimulus presentation. Four groups of participants evaluated the same set of 120 pictures from the International Affective System (IAPS) presented in four different sequences. Our data reveal strong effects of both aspects of temporal context in all presentation sequences, modified only slightly in their nature and magnitude. Furthermore, this was true for both valence and arousal ratings. Subjective ratings of negative target images were influenced by temporal context most strongly across all sequences. We also observed important gender differences: females expressed greater sensitivity to temporal-context effects and design manipulations relative to males, especially for negative images. Our results have important implications for future emotion research that employs normative picture stimuli, and contributes to our understanding of context effects in general.

Judging the duration of emotional stimuli is known to be influenced by their valence and arousal values. However, whether and how perceiving emotion in one modality affects time perception in another modality is still unclear. To investigate this, we compared the influence of different types of emotional pictures-a picture of threat, disgust, or a neutral picture presented at the start of a trial-on temporal bisection judgments of the duration of a subsequently presented vibrotactile stimulus. We found an overestimation of tactile duration following exposure to pictures of threat, but not pictures of disgust (even though these scored equally high on arousal), in a short-range temporal bisection task (range 300/900 ms). Follow-up experiments revealed that this duration lengthening effect was abolished when the range to be bisected was increased (1000/1900 ms). However, duration overestimation was maintained in the short-range bisection task regardless of whether the interval between the visual and tactile events was short or long. This pattern is inconsistent with a general arousal interpretation of duration distortion and suggests that crossmodal linkages in the processing of emotions and emotional regulation are two main factors underlying the manifestation of crossmodal duration modulation.

Acta Psychologica, 2014

Emotional effects on human time perception are generally attributed to arousal speeding up or slowing down the internal clock. The aim of the present study is to investigate the less frequently considered role of attention as an alternative mediator of these effects with the help of event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants produced short intervals (0.9, 1.5, 2.7, and 3.3 s) while viewing high arousal images with pleasant and unpleasant contents in comparison to neutral images. Behavioral results revealed that durations were overproduced for the 0.9 s interval whereas, for 2.7 and 3.3 s intervals, underproduction was observed. The effect of affective valence was present for the shorter durations and decreased as the target intervals became longer. More specifically, the durations for unpleasant images were less overproduced in the 0.9 s intervals, and for the 1.5 s trials, durations for unpleasant images were slightly underproduced, compared to pleasant images, which were overproduced. The analysis of different ERP components suggests possible attention processes related to the timing of affective images in addition to changes in pacemaker speed. Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) was larger for positive than for negative images, indicating valence-specific differences in activation of early attention mechanisms. Within the early P1 and the Late Positive Potential (LPP) components, both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli exhibited equal affective modulation. Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) remained independent of both timing performance and affective modulation. This pattern suggests that both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli enhanced arousal and captured attention, but the latter effect was more pronounced for pleasant stimuli. The valence-specificity of affective attention revealed by ERPs combined with behavioral timing results suggests that attention processes indeed contribute to emotion-induced temporal distortions, especially for longer target intervals.

Multimodal Technologies and Interaction - Special issue: Musical Interactions, vol. II, 2021

One of the most tangible effects of music is its ability to alter our perception of time. Research on waiting times and time estimation of musical excerpts has attested its veritable effects. Nevertheless, there exist contrasting results regarding several musical features’ influence on time perception. When considering emotional valence and arousal, there is some evidence that positive affect music fosters time underestimation, whereas negative affect music leads to overestimation. Instead, contrasting results exist with regard to arousal. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, a systematic investigation has not yet been conducted within the audiovisual domain, wherein music might improve the interaction between the user and the audiovisual media by shaping the recipients’ time perception. Through the current between-subjects online experiment (n = 565), we sought to analyze the influence that four soundtracks (happy, relaxing, sad, scary), differing in valence and arousal, exerted on the time estimation of a short movie, as compared to a no-music condition. The results reveal that (1) the mere presence of music led to time overestimation as opposed to the absence of music, (2) the soundtracks that were perceived as more arousing (i.e., happy and scary) led to time overestimation. The findings are discussed in terms of psychological and phenomenological models of time perception.