Subjective Time Perception Research Articles

Особенности субъективного восприятия психологического времени пациентов, проходящих лечение от алкогольной и наркотической зависимостей

Климанова Светлана Георгиевна, клинический психолог, младший научный сотрудник отделения лечения больных алкоголизмом; Санкт-Петербургский научно-исследовательский психоневрологический институт им. В.М. Бехтерева (Санкт-Петербург), svetlanagk@mail.ru Трусова Анна Владимировна, кандидат психологических наук, доцент кафедры медицинской психологии и психофизиологии; Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет; научный сотрудник отделения лечения больных алкоголизмом, Санкт-Петербургский научно-исследовательский психоневрологический институт им. В.М. Бехтерева (Санкт-Петербург), аnnа.v.trusovа@gmаil.соm Березина Анна Андреевна, магистрант факультета психологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет (Санкт-Петербург), aneta.berezina@gmail.com Мустафина Кристина Альбертовна, студент, факультет психологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет (Санкт-Петербург), sayoceana@gmail.com Шамаева Алина Нурдиевна, студент, факультет психологии, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет (Санкт-Петербург), ashamaeva16@gmail.com Гвоздецкий Антон Николаевич, аспирант, медицинский факультет, Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет (Санкт-Петербург), comisora@yandex.ru S.G. Klimanova1, svetlanagk@mail.ru A.V. Trusova1,2, аnnа.v.trusovа@gmаil.соm A.A. Berezina2, aneta.berezina@gmail.com. K.A. Mustafina2, sayoceana@gmail.com A.N. Shamaeva2, ashamaeva16@gmail.com A.N. Gvozdetsky2, comisora@yandex.ru 1 St. Petersburg Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation 2 St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation

Reward alters the perception of time

Recent findings indicate that monetary rewards have a powerful effect on cognitive performance. In order to maximize overall gain, the prospect of earning reward biases visual attention to specific locations or stimulus features improving perceptual sensitivity and processing. The question we addressed in this study is whether the prospect of reward also affects the subjective perception of time. Here, participants performed a prospective timing task using temporal oddballs. The results show that temporal oddballs, displayed for varying durations, presented in a sequence of standard stimuli were perceived to last longer when they signaled a relatively high reward compared to when they signaled no or low reward. When instead of the oddball the standards signaled reward, the perception of the temporal oddball remained unaffected. We argue that by signaling reward, a stimulus becomes subjectively more salient thereby modulating its attentional deployment and distorting how it is perceived in time.

Making Time for Nature: Visual Exposure to Natural Environments Lengthens Subjective Time Perception and Reduces Impulsivity

Impulsivity in delay discounting is associated with maladaptive behaviors such as overeating and drug and alcohol abuse. Researchers have recently noted that delay discounting, even when measured by a brief laboratory task, may be the best predictor of human health related behaviors (e.g., exercise) currently available. Identifying techniques to decrease impulsivity in delay discounting, therefore, could help improve decision-making on a global scale. Visual exposure to natural environments is one recent approach shown to decrease impulsive decision-making in a delay discounting task, although the mechanism driving this result is currently unknown. The present experiment was thus designed to evaluate not only whether visual exposure to natural (mountains, lakes) relative to built (buildings, cities) environments resulted in less impulsivity, but also whether this exposure influenced time perception. Participants were randomly assigned to either a natural environment condition or a built environment condition. Participants viewed photographs of either natural scenes or built scenes before and during a delay discounting task in which they made choices about receiving immediate or delayed hypothetical monetary outcomes. Participants also completed an interval bisection task in which natural or built stimuli were judged as relatively longer or shorter presentation durations. Following the delay discounting and interval bisection tasks, additional measures of time perception were administered, including how many minutes participants thought had passed during the session and a scale measurement of whether time "flew" or "dragged" during the session. Participants exposed to natural as opposed to built scenes were less impulsive and also reported longer subjective session times, although no differences across groups were revealed with the interval bisection task. These results are the first to suggest that decreased impulsivity from exposure to natural as opposed to built environments may be related to lengthened time perception.

Discounting over subjective time: Subjective time perception helps explain multiple discounted utility anomalies

Consumers often face choices involving intertemporal tradeoffs. Existing research suggests that, in general, decision makers do not obey discounted utility theory because their discount rates are context dependent. Recent literature incorporates decision makers' subjective perception of time into the classic discounted utility model and finds relatively constant discount rates over subjective time. In the current study, we investigated the magnitude effect with subjective time, provided a holistic view via a more comprehensive experiment including multiple anomalies, and found that subjective time perception was able to explain most of the anomalies simultaneously in a single scenario.

Does Monitoring Performance Eliminate the Ego-depletion Phenomenon and Influence Perception of Time?

This study evaluated whether monitoring performance against an objective measure eliminated ego-depletion and enhanced the accuracy of one's temporal perception. Two independent variables, depletion level and monitoring status, were manipulated in 83 undergraduates (71% female, median age = 21.2 years), who were then measured for persistence on a series of anagram puzzles (first dependant variable) and subjective time perception estimates (second dependant variable). While depleted participants in the nonmonitoring condition exhibited significantly less persistence than those in the performance-monitoring or low-depleted conditions, no differences in time perception scores were detected among the four groups. It appears monitoring behavior against an objective measure is a robust tool to improve self-control ability in depleted individuals; however, this effect is unrelated to perception of time.

Duration estimation entails predicting when

The estimation of duration can be affected by context and surprise. Using MagnetoEncephaloGraphy (MEG), we tested whether increased neural activity during surprise and following neural suppression in two different contexts supported subjective time dilation (Eagleman and Pariyadath, 2009; Pariyadath and Eagleman, 2012). Sequences of three 300ms frequency-modulated (FM, control) or pure tones (test) were presented and followed by a fourth FM varying in duration. In test, the last FM was perceived as significantly longer than veridical duration (Tse et al., 2004) but did not differ from the perceived duration in control. Several novel and distinct neural signatures were observed in duration estimation: first, neural suppression of standard stimuli was observed for the onset but not for the offset auditory evoked responses. Second, ramping activity increased with veridical duration in control whereas at the same latency in test, the amplitude of the midlatency response increased with the distance of deviant durations. Third, in both conditions, the amplitude of the offset auditory evoked responses accounted well for participants' performance: the longer the perceived duration, the larger the offset response. Fourth, neural duration demarcated by the peak latencies of the onset and ramping evoked activities indexed a systematic time compression that reliably predicted subjective time perception. Our findings suggest that interval timing undergoes time compression by capitalizing on the predicted offset of an auditory event.

Role of Personal and Methodological Factors in Time Perception

The study examined the accuracy of time perception in relation to chronological age, gender, method of estimation, and duration. Three different methods of assessing subjective time perception, viz., interval estimation, time estimation, and interval reproduction were used in the study. The duration involved were 1 min, 2 min, 3 min, and 4 min for interval estimation and time estimation, and 15 s, 30 s, 45 s, and 60 s for interval reproduction. The participants comprised of 60 males and 60 females in the age range of 10–80 years. The statistical techniques used were 4-way (method x interval x gender x age) ANOVA for repeated measurements, followed by post-hoc analysis of means. The results showed that accuracy of time perception was influenced by the method used for assessing perceived time, the duration involved, and age of the subjects, while it was unrelated to their gender. Assessment using interval estimation method resulted in overestimation of the given duration, while the use of time estimation method resulted in underestimation. Both these results indicated that there is shrinkage in the internal representation of time. The results also showed that there is a sharp decrease in the accuracy of time perception after the age of 60 years.

Signatures of Subjective Time Perception in the ERP During Stimulus Encoding

The passage of time is inseparably linked to any subjective experience, but time cannot be perceived itself. Since humans lack a sensory organ for time, time perception is constructed based on the percepts of the existent senses, such as lights or tones. Biases in these percepts can lead to biases in temporal perception, which explains why subjective time not always matches objective time. For instance, the number of perceived (and not the objectively presented) changes in an event affects the perception of duration. Currently, it is unknown at which stage of cognitive processing sensory input affects subjective time perception. It could be that time perception is based on early sensory processing and that the same areas that encode a stimulus’ sensory properties, also encode its duration. Alternatively, time could be processed by a central, modality-independent clock, which receives input from sensory processing, but is not directly related to it.In a previous experiment, we showed that only the conscious perception of flicker, but not its sensory processing affected perceived duration. However, it is yet unknown whether the flicker affects perceived duration at the perceptual level (during the presentation of the stimulus), or at the response level (after the end of the stimulus). To address this question, we measured participants’ electroencephalogram (EEG), while they were presented with flickering and static stimuli of varying durations. We used a bisection task, in which participants had to judge whether a stimulus was long or short as compared to two previously memorized reference durations. We analyzed the event related activity during the perceptual encoding of the stimulus, to test whether it contains activity related to the subjective perception of time. Any effect occurring in the event related potential (ERP) before the time at which the participant could make a decision (“short” or “long”) should reflect a perceptual effect of the flicker on subjective duration.We show that the flickering stimuli, which were judged as lasting longer compared to static stimuli, elicited enhanced negativity in the EEG signal during stimulus encoding. This negativity has previously been characterized as a marker of subjective duration perception, also termed contingent negative variation (CNV). The amplitude of the CNV measured during stimulus encoding predicts the temporal judgment of the participant, showing that the effect is already present at the perceptual level.

How perceptions of temporal distance influence satiation

Although people recover from satiation with the natural passage of time, we examine whether it is possible to influence the recovery process merely by changing the perceived temporal distance from past consumption. Experiment 1, a field experiment, demonstrates that influencing the perceived temporal distance from dinner-goers' last meal affects the caloric value of the meal purchased (more recent leads to smaller food purchase). In a lab environment controlling for objective temporal distance and initial satiation, Experiment 2 demonstrates that these changes in perceived temporal distance also affect the actual enjoyment of an experience (listening to a favored song). Beyond these reconstructed temporal judgments, Experiment 3 directly manipulates the perceived length of the intervening period since last consumption using an altered time clock, and replicates these effects on satiation. Our findings illustrate that simple manipulations of subjective time perception can influence consumption, even in the presence of very real physiological inputs, and provide further insight into how satiation is constructed.

Feast Today Makes Fast Tomorrow? Influencing Satiation through Perceptions of Temporal Distance

Although people recover from satiation with the natural passage of time, we examine whether it is possible to influence the recovery process merely by changing the perceived temporal distance from past consumption. Experiment 1, a field experiment, demonstrates that influencing the perceived temporal distance from dinner-goers’ last meal affects the caloric value of the meal purchased (more recent leads to smaller food purchase). In a lab environment controlling for objective temporal distance and initial satiation, Experiment 2 demonstrates that these changes in perceived temporal distance also affect the actual enjoyment of an experience (listening to a favored song). Beyond these reconstructed temporal judgments, Experiment 3 directly manipulates the perceived length of the intervening period since last consumption using an altered time clock, and replicates these effects on satiation. Our findings illustrate that simple manipulations of subjective time perception can influence consumption, even in the presence of very real physiological inputs, and provide further insight into how satiation is constructed.

On the Use of Philosophical Frameworks of Subjective Time and Time Perception in the Neuroscientific Research

The history of philosophical inquiry of time has been almost as long as the history of Western thought. Numerous concepts and ideas on the nature of time and time perception have been proposed over the centuries. Some of these ideas laid the groundwork for the psychological and neuroscientific studies of time processes. To this day, philosophical concepts inspire empirical research of time. In some cases, this interplay between philosophical ideas and neuroscientific studies of time processes occurs seamlessly. In other cases, however, attempts to directly apply philosophical concepts in the experimental research encounter impassable barriers. This commentary discusses two recent applications of philosophical frameworks of subjective time and time perception in the neuroscientific research.

Sooner or Later: How Temporal Distance Influences Decisions and Dynamics within Organizations

Despite an increased interest in the effects of temporal distance on outcomes relevant to management scholarship, there is still much to understand about the way in which it affects processes and outcomes both at the individual and team level. This symposium advances current knowledge about temporal distance by addressing a few important gaps in the literature. The first two papers deepen our understanding of how temporal distance affects a) the way people process information when making important decisions, such as health decisions and b) the way people assess risk associated with innovation behaviors. Recognizing that the perceived distance between two events does not always perfectly reflect the actual passage of time, the third paper explores the effects of landmark events (e.g., birthdays, job changes) on individuals’ subjective time perceptions and subsequent goal pursuit. The fourth and last paper in this symposium segues from the first three papers (and most of past research on temporal distance), which focus solely on temporal distance at the individual level, to explore all four dimensions of psychological distance – temporal, social, physical, and hypothetical distance – in the context of team processes and interpersonal differences. Taken together, the four papers in this symposium advance our understanding of the important role that temporal distance plays in shaping individual employees’ decisions and workplace dynamics. The Impact of Temporal Distance and Climate on Perceived Risk and Innovative Behaviors Presenter: James Berry; U. College London Presenter: David A Hofmann; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Presenter: Deirdre Gobeille Snyder; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Does Difference = Distance? Experiencing Diversity as Psychological Construal of Teams in Time Presenter: David A. Harrison; The U. of Texas at Austin Presenter: Luis Martins; The U. of Texas at Austin Presenter: Yurianna Kim; The U. of Texas at Austin Effects of Temporal Distance on Cancer Screening Decisions Presenter: Cheryl Wakslak; U. of Southern California Presenter: Alison Ledgerwood; U. of California, Davis Presenter: Amber Sanchez; U. of California Davis Meaningful Temporal Landmarks Distance Past Imperfections and Motivate Aspirational Behavior Presenter: Hengchen Dai; U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Katherine L. Milkman; U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Jason Riis; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania

Subjective time perception is affected by different durations of exposure to abstract paintings that represent human movement.

perception can be affected by real emotional pictures of people that evoke different levels of arousal. Figurative artwork images of body postures that imply movement with different intensities and evoke different levels of arousal can modulate the perception of time. The present study investigated whether abstract paintings that represent motion in different ways affect the perception of time when subjects are exposed to the paintings for different durations. Undergraduate students observed 20 abstract paintings from different artistic schools (i.e., cubism, constructivism, expressionism, and futurism). They observed for 3 s each painting and estimated the time of exposure (reproduction method). After the time estimations, the subjects completed different semantic Movement, Arousal, Complexity, and Recognition scales to obtain information about how the painting compositions were perceived. Time distortions were observed for only two cubist paintings that represented human forms, which were related to both evoked arousal and implied movement (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 further verified whether these time distortions were related to implied movement perception or arousal. Different groups of participants were exposed for 3 and 9 s to only four cubist paintings that represented human forms. These time exposures (3 and 9 s) were used because the arousal-evoking effects may be transient for exposure times that are longer than 2-3 s. The data analysis revealed overestimation of time for the cubist painting that had greater arousal and movement scores only when the subjects were exposed for 9 s, showing that implied movement in abstract human figures is more effective than images with emotional content. We discuss the effect of durations of exposure to pictorial characteristics of artwork on time perception, emphasizing aspects of the visual perception of human forms in cubist paintings and arousal effects in an aesthetic episode. Keywords: time perception, static images, implied movement, cubism, arousal.

Can Victoria's Secret change the future? A subjective time perception account of sexual-cue effects on impatience.

Sexual cues influence decisions not only about sex, but also about unrelated outcomes such as money. In the presence of sexual cues, individuals are more impatient when making intertemporal monetary tradeoffs, choosing smaller immediate amounts over larger delayed amounts. Previous research has emphasized the power of sexual cues to induce a strong general psychological desire to obtain not only sex-related but all available rewards. In the case of money, that heightened appetite enhances the perceived value of immediate monetary rewards. We propose a different psychological mechanism to explain this effect: Sexual cues induce impatience through their ability to lengthen the perceived temporal distance to delayed rewards. That is, sexual cues make the temporal delay seem subjectively longer, resulting in greater impatience for monetary rewards. We attribute this process to the arousing nature of sexual cues, thus extending findings on arousal and overestimation of elapsed time to the domain of future time perception and intertemporal preferences.

Your Wait Time From This Point Will Be . . .

Amusement park developers have begun designing queue systems to make the wait for service less cumbersome for guests. Maister introduced a theoretical framework with eight guidelines for improving customer satisfaction and minimizing the perception of wait duration. These guide- lines were designed to be generalizable to a wide range of settings but do not fully take into account the unique characteristics of theme park queues. The following proposed guidelines offer a taxonomy for reducing the negative impact of subjective perception of time and provide a specific framework for designing these queued environments in an amusement park setting.

Looking Ahead: Subjective Time Perception and Individual Time Discounting

Time discounting is at the heart of economic decision-making. We disentangle hyperbolic discounting from subjective time perception using experimental data from incentive-compatible tests to measure time preferences, and a set of experimental tasks to measure time perception. The two behavioral parameters may be related to two factors that affect how we look ahead to future events. The first is that some component of time preferences reflect hyperbolic discounting. The second factor is that non-constant discounting may also be a reflection of subjective time perception: if people’s perception of time follows a near logarithmic process (as all other physiological perceptions such as heat, sound, and light do) then all existing estimates of individual discounting will be mis-measured and incorrectly suggest “hyperbolic” discounting, even if discounting over subjective time is constant. To test these hypotheses, we empirically estimate the two distinct behavioral parameters using data collected from 178 participants to an experiment conducted at the London School of Economics Behavioural Research Lab. The results support the hypothesis that apparent non-constant discounting is largely a reflection of subjective time perception.

Contextual influences of dimension, speed, and direction of motion on subjective time perception

Research has indicated that the direction of motion and the speed of motion can influence the subjective estimates of temporal duration of two-dimensional (2-D) stimuli expanding and contracting within the picture plane. In this study, we investigated whether the contextual cues of stimulus/movement-plane dimensionality (2-D stimuli with implied movement in the picture plane or depth-rendered "3-D" stimuli with implied movement in the depth plane) influence and interact with speed and implied movement direction during interval estimation. Participants viewed a series of standard stimulus durations followed by a test stimulus duration and determined whether the test and standard durations differed. The results indicated that moving stimuli were overestimated relative to stationary stimuli, regardless of the direction of motion or dimensionality. Also, faster-moving stimuli were overestimated relative to slower-moving stimuli. Importantly, an interaction between movement direction and dimensional cues indicated that the loom/recede distinction occurs for 2-D but not for 3-D stimuli. It is possible that the loom/recede distinction for the 2-D condition may be an artifact arising from reduced or from a lack of perceived motion in 2-D "recede" conditions, rather than a specific overestimation for looming stimuli.

Cognitive Distortions During Law Enforcement Shooting

AbstractNine systematic studies examining law enforcement reactions during shooting accidents have been published. The research shows that during critical incidents the substantial majority of officers experience specific perceptual distortions. Most commonly experienced distortions are visual or aural. Most frequently reported visual distortion is a tunnel vision, which was present in roughly half of the cases. Altered subjective perception of time was found in all studies researching that problem. Distorted memory and dissociation was reported in more forms in particular studies. All studies used very similar methodology where most of the studies used mailed surveys or questionnaires. The sample size of systematic studies examining law enforcement reactions during the shootings is in majority of studies relatively small up to hundred subjects. All the published studies are on descriptive levels and are not connected with theoretical background. Other studies researched dissociation during critical law enforcement incidents. Future ways of cognitive distortions during the research of shooting incidents are discussed.

The Wages of Waiting and Simple Models of Delay Discounting

This paper has four objectives. First, we describe and evaluate three models of delay discounting (time preference), showing how they relate to each other and to already established concepts in accounting/finance and elsewhere. The models are: exponential (E), hyperbolic (H), and arithmetic (A), a simple difference model. Second, we perform a small meta-study of past research in binary intertemporal choice, to evaluate the models against published data. Third, we conduct three new studies of our own to test the models’ goodness-of-fit to individual discounting behavior. Fourth, we establish the robustness of our conclusions to modeling the subjective perception of time and money using Stevens-like power laws. The clear winner is A, both in the meta-study and in our own new data; with re-specifications of time and money; across distinct cohorts of participants; and with stimuli that generate different correlational relationships between the models. To protect our conclusions against artifactual dependence on unnecessary assumptions, we use only standard nonparametric statistics to measure goodness-of-fit of the models to individual data, and to test those fits using inferential statistics.

Subjective time perception and behavioral activation system strength predict delay of gratification ability

This study investigated the relationship between subjective time perception and behavioral impulsivity in a healthy, undergraduate population. Data were collected from 62 participants on internal clock speed (ICS, a measure of subjective time perception), behavioral impulsivity, intelligence, and Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Strengths (BIS and BAS). As expected, after controlling for other significant predictors, ICS accounted for a significant amount of variance in behavioral impulsivity. Surprisingly, participants who had slower ICSs were more behaviorally impulsive than participants who had faster ICSs. In addition, and as anticipated, participants who had less accurate ICSs were significantly more impulsive than participants who were more accurate. Last, higher BAS significantly predicted decreased behavioral impulsivity. Results are discussed in terms of current theory relating ICS to impulsivity, and a new theoretical framework is advanced.