The Impact of Attention on the Internal Clock in Prospective Timing: Is It Direct or Indirect? In: Vatakis A, Esposito A, Giagkou M, Cummins F, Papadelis G, editors. Multidisciplinary Aspects of Time and Time Perception. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg; 2011. pp. 137-50. [DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-21478-3_12]

The effect of visually filled reproductions on the reproduced durations of auditory intervals

The present study examined how the perception of time is affected by the presence of a visual stimulus during the reproduction phase of an online time reproduction task. Participants were instructed to reproduce the durations of speed-altered speech snippets with either a picture or a blank screen presented during the reproduction phase. Results showed that fast speeches were reproduced as longer than slow ones, while the reproduced durations of short speeches were closer to the actual durations than were the long speeches. In addition, longer reproduced durations were observed in trials with a picture than in trials with a blank screen. These results provide clear evidence that postencoding information can influence the reproduction of previously encoded temporal intervals and are discussed in the context of attention allocation and its possible influence on an internal clock mechanism. Also, the study provides evidence that online testing is reliable for assessing biases in time perception, at least with time reproduction tasks.

Influence of Ambient Odors on Time Perception in a Retrospective Paradigm

Environmental stimuli can influence time perception, including sensory stimulations. Among them, odors are known to modulate emotion, attention, behavior, or performance, but few studies have investigated the possible effects of ambient odors on time perception. Thus, the present study aimed to compare in a retrospective paradigm the time estimation in three conditions, i.e., with phenyl ethyl alcohol as a pleasant odor, pyridine as unpleasant odor, and a control condition without ambient odor. A total of 90 participants (M age = 23 years, 10 months) took part in three different tasks, i.e., an aesthetic classification task, a sensorimotor checking task, and a mathematical operations task. Results showed a better accuracy of the time estimation in odor condition (1) independently of the characteristics of odorants (2) limited to tasks with a low cognitive involvement. These findings are discussed in relation to the possible role of attention and arousal in the modulation of time perception by ambient odors.

Emotional modulation of interval timing and time perception

Like other senses, our perception of time is not veridical, but rather, is modulated by changes in environmental context. Anecdotal experiences suggest that emotions can be powerful modulators of time perception; nevertheless, the functional and neural mechanisms underlying emotion-induced temporal distortions remain unclear. Widely accepted pacemaker-accumulator models of time perception suggest that changes in arousal and attention have unique influences on temporal judgments and contribute to emotional distortions of time perception. However, such models conflict with current views of arousal and attention suggesting that current models of time perception do not adequately explain the variability in emotion-induced temporal distortions. Instead, findings provide support for a new perspective of emotion-induced temporal distortions that emphasizes both the unique and interactive influences of arousal and attention on time perception over time. Using this framework, we discuss plausible functional and neural mechanisms of emotion-induced temporal distortions and how these temporal distortions may have important implications for our understanding of how emotions modulate our perceptual experiences in service of adaptive responding to biologically relevant stimuli.

On the replication of Kristofferson's (1980) quantal timing for duration discrimination: some learning but no quanta and not much of a Weber constant

This study revisited Kristofferson's (Perception & Psychophysics 27:300-306, 1980) report showing that, with sufficient practice at interval discrimination, the relationship between timing variability and physical time is a step function-in other words, that psychological time is quantized. Two participants completed 260 sessions of a temporal discrimination task, 20 consecutive sessions for each of 13 base durations ranging from 100 to 1,480 ms. The data do not replicate Kristofferson's (Perception & Psychophysics 27:300-306, 1980) quantal finding, and it is argued that the effect Kristofferson reported may have been due to specific methodological decisions. Importantly, the data show (1) some limitation of Weber's law for time, even for the narrow range of the present investigation, and (2) that extensive training provides some modest benefit to temporal discrimination, mainly for longer intervals, and that this benefit primarily occurs in the first few sessions.