A Directional Congruency Effect of Amplified Dilated Time Perception Induced by Looming Stimuli With Implied Motion Cues

Abstract

The perception of time is not veridical, but, rather, it is susceptible to environmental context, like the intrinsic dynamics of moving stimuli. The direction of motion has been reported to affect time perception such that movement of objects toward an observer (i.e., looming stimuli) is perceived as longer in duration than movement of objects away from the observer (i.e., receding stimuli). In the current study we investigated whether this looming/receding temporal asymmetry can be modulated by the direction of movement implied by static cues of images. Participants were presented with images of a running person, rendered from either the front or the back (i.e., representing movement toward or away from the observer). In Experiment 1, the size of the images was constant. In Experiment 2, the image sizes varied (i.e., increasing: looming; or decreasing: receding). In both experiments, participants performed a temporal bisection task by judging the duration of the image presentation as “short” or “long”. In Experiment 1, we found no influence of implied-motion direction in the participants’ duration perceptions. In Experiment 2, however, participants overestimated the duration of the looming, as compared to the receding image in relation to real motion. This finding replicated previous findings of the looming/receding asymmetry using naturalistic human-character stimuli. Further, in Experiment 2 we observed a directional congruency effect between real and implied motion; stimuli were perceived as lasting longer when the directions of real and implied motion were congruent versus when these directions were incongruent. Thus, looming (versus receding) movement, a perceptually salient stimulus, elicits differential temporal processing, and higher-order motion processing integrates signals of real and implied motion in time perception.

How Do Looming and Receding Emotional Faces Modulate Duration Perception?

“…As in Experiment 1, we again failed to find the expected main effect of facial emotion in participants' duration perception. Experiment 2, however, revealed a significant effect of motion direction-temporal overestimation of looming stimuli relative to receding stimuli, replicating previous findings of the looming/receding temporal asymmetry (e.g., Seo et al, 2021;van Wassenhove et al, 2008;Wittmann et al, 2010) with human face stimuli. Most importantly, the results of the GLMM analysis showed that the looming/ receding asymmetry was modulated by participant-rated arousal of stimuli; lowarousing faces were perceived as lasting longer when they were looming than when receding, but such looming/receding difference decreased with higher subjective arousal ratings.…”

“…While these studies did not explicitly measure time perception, such effects may be associated with distortions in time perception (Brendel et al, 2012, 2014). Of more direct relevance to the current study, Seo et al (2021) used human images to depict a body movement and demonstrated that a lengthened perception of the duration of looming versus receding stimuli could be modulated by the direction of motion that was implied from the content of the pictorial image.…”

“…Procedure. Our procedure was modeled after Seo et al (2021). Participants individually performed a temporal bisection task in a dim-lit room, with both a training session and a test session (see Figure 2).…”

“…Experiment 2 involved 30 different female undergraduates, who had not participated in Experiment 1. Based on Seo et al's (2021) work, using the temporal bisection task to examine an interaction effect between motion direction in depth (looming vs. receding) and a stimulus factor (direction of implied motion), we conducted a second statistical power analysis. Assuming 95% power, alpha = .05, a repeated measure ANOVA, and an effect size of η p 2 = 0.3, this calculation suggested a minimum sample of 10 participants to detect an interaction effect.…”

“…Another motion-related variable influencing perceived duration is the directionality of motion. Previous investigators have reported an anisotropic modulation of perceived duration by the direction of motion in depth, with stimuli moving towards an observer (i.e., objects that expand in size) leading to overestimated duration relative to receding stimuli (i.e., objects that contract in size) (e.g., Kline & Reed, 2013;New & Scholl, 2009;Seo et al, 2021;van Wassenhove et al, 2008;Wittmann et al, 2010; but see Grassi & Pavan, 2012;Kline & Reed, 2013;Sgouramani et al, 2020). For example, using an oddball task, Wittmann et al (2010) presented participants with a stream of five visual stimuli, all of which were stationary discs shown for identical durations except the fourth disc, an oddball stimulus, that was either expanding (i.e., looming) or contracting (i.e., receding).…”