Time contraction caused by a distractor in children and adults: The influence of inhibition capacities

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the cognitive processes involved in time contraction caused by a non-temporal distractor during the presentation of a temporal stimulus. To this aim 95 children aged 5 to 8 years old as well as 25 adults were first trained to discriminate, on two visual temporal bisection tasks, a short standard duration (400 or 600 ms) from a long one (1500 or 2400 ms). They had then to decide whether intermediate stimulus duration was more similar to the short or to the long standard duration. Furthermore, a 40 ms distractor taking the form of a 4 cm diameter rosette, either did or did not appear during the temporal stimulus. Participants' task was to report whether they had been exposed to the short or long standard duration. Subsequently, each subject's capacities in terms of memory skills (short term and working memory), as well as attention (selective attention and inhibition), were assessed using different neuropsychological tests. The results showed a shortening effect of the perceived time from non-distractor to distractor trials, which also turned out to attenuate with the age increase. Interestingly, inhibition was found to mediate this effect while the other cognitive variables were found to be of no significance. We therefore discussed the importance of categorizing two attentional interferences: one related to attention control and the other to attentional resources.