Abstract
Time perception has been shown to be altered by emotions. This study employed event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the effects of two threat-related emotions on the judgment of time intervals in the range of 490–910 ms. We demonstrated that disgust and fear have distinct influences on time perception. At the behavioral level, disgusted faces were estimated longer and fearful faces were estimated shorter (i.e., the generalization gradient for the disgusted faces was shifted left while the generalization gradient for the fearful faces was shifted right) when compared with neutral faces. Accordingly, the contingent negative variation, an online ERP index of timing, displayed larger area in disgust and smaller area in fear conditions when compared with neutral condition (disgust = 1.94 ± 2.35 μV•s, neutral = 1.40 ± 2.5 μV•s, and fear = 1.00 ± 2.26 μV•s). These findings indicated that specific neural mechanisms may underlie the attention effects of different subtypes of threat-related emotions on timing; compared with neutral faces, fearful faces are likely to attract more attentional resources while disgusted faces may attract less attentional resources for emotional processing. The major contribution of the current study is to provide neural correlates of fear vs. disgust divergence in the aspect of time perception and to demonstrate beyond the behavioral level that the categorization of threat-related emotions should be refined so to highlight the adaptability of the human defense system.
Highlights
The perception of time is essential for the survival of individuals and for everyday activities (Wittmann, 2009; Mella et al, 2011)
60% disgusted, 56% neutral, and 50% fearful faces with a duration of 595 ms were judged as with a duration of 700 ms while 47% disgusted, 55% neutral, and 60% fearful faces with a duration of 805 ms were judged as with a duration of 700 ms. This pattern of responses indicated that disgusted faces were estimated longer and fearful faces were estimated shorter when compared with neutral faces
The event-related potentials (ERPs) data revealed that the contingent negative variation (CNV), which is an online index of timing, displayed separated waveforms in different emotional conditions, with larger amplitudes in disgust and smaller amplitudes in fear conditions when compared with neutral condition (Figure 3)
Summary
The perception of time is essential for the survival of individuals and for everyday activities (Wittmann, 2009; Mella et al, 2011). Humans possess neural mechanisms which enable them to estimate time accurately. Time perception in various emotional conditions is part of everyday experience, analysis of the intricate interplay between emotion and interval timing remains relatively rare (Schirmer, 2004; Droit-Volet and Meck, 2007; Wittmann, 2009). Studying the temporal illusions caused by emotion is a means of gaining a better understanding of the function of emotions and the mechanism underlying their influence on behaviors (Droit-Volet and Gil, 2009)
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