What's next?: Time is subjectively dilated not only for 'oddball' events, but also for events immediately after oddballs.

Abstract

Our experience of time is strikingly plastic: Depending on contextual factors, the same objective duration can seem to fly by or drag on. Perhaps the most direct demonstration of such subjective time dilation is the oddball effect: when seeing identical objects appear one after another, followed by an "oddball" (e.g., a disc that suddenly grows in size, in a sequence of otherwise static discs), observers experience this oddball as having lasted longer than its nonoddball counterparts. Despite extensive work on this phenomenon, a surprisingly foundational question remains unasked: What actually gets dilated? Beyond the oddball, are the objects just before (or just after) the oddball also dilated? As in previous studies, observers viewed sequences of colored discs, one of which could be the oddball-and subsequently reproduced the oddball's duration. Unlike previous studies, however, there were also critical trials in which observers instead reproduced the duration of the disc immediately before or after the oddball. A clear pattern emerged: oddball-induced time dilation extended to the post-oddball disc, but not the pre-oddball disc. Whence this temporal asymmetry? We suggest that an oddball's sudden appearance may induce uncertainty about what will happen next, heightening attention until after the uncertainty is resolved.