A New Illusion of Time Perception

Abstract

When two very short time intervals are presented serially by sound markers (in such a way that they share a common marker) the subject's duration judgments of the second time interval can be affected by the duration of the first interval. Such a conspicuous effect has not been reported in the literature. Standard empty time intervals of 120, 240, 480, and 720 msec were preceded by a neighboring empty time interval of various physical durations, and subjects adjusted a comparison empty time interval to the same subjective duration as these standards. We found clear underestimations of the standard duration when its physical duration was 120 msec. For example, when the preceding duration was 45 msec, the relative underestimation was about 40%. Because such a stable and remarkable underestimation appeared in a very simple situation, this phenomenon may be called a new illusion. Such an illusion did not appear when the time interval to be judged was succeeded by another time interval. At present we cannot explain the illusion, but in the general discussion we attempt to relate it to some findings in rhythm perception.

Duration perception in crossmodally-defined intervals

“…Because in our experiment we asked participants to compare crossmodally-defined empty intervals to filled auditory intervals, we have been able to limit the influence of possible biases such as temporal shrinking (Nakajima et al, 1991cited in Nakajima et al, 2004Sasaki et al, 2002), temporal stretching (Sasaki et al, 2010), and temporal ventriloquism effects (Morein-Zamir, 2003). The psychophysical findings on duration perception of crossmodally-defined intervals in our study are overall consistent with previous work (i.e., Grondin & Rousseau, 1991).…”

“…The filled interval was a continuous sound that lasted for 30%, 60%, 80%, 100%, 120%, 140%, and 170% of the duration of the empty interval. We used the combination of empty and filled intervals within a trial to control for perceptual time perception biases such as temporal shrinking (Nakajima, ten Hoopen, & van der Wilk, 1991cited in Nakajima et al, 2004Sasaki, Suetomi, Nakajima, & ten Hoopen, 2002), temporal stretching (Sasaki et al, 2010) or temporal ventriloquism (Morein-Zamir, 2003) which were likely to occur if we had asked participants to compare two empty intervals. Temporal shrinking refers to a perceptual bias that occurs when a train of three or four brief signals are presented.…”

Surveying the Temporal Structure of Sounds Used in Music Perception

“…Furthermore, subsequent research illustrates significant differences in associative memory tasks involving four note sequences of percussive and flat tones (Schutz & Stefanucci, 2010), as well as differences in the duration judgment strategies employed when estimating their length (Vallet, Shore, & Schutz, 2014). Although this work was not published in Music Perception, this journal has published other work on associative memory (Boltz, 2001) as well as duration estimation (Nakajima, Hoopen, & Van Der Wilk, 1991). Consequently, we believe envelope's crucial role in a variety of tasks focused on ostensibly unrelated issues is broadly relevant for those interested in the perception of music (as well as sound in general).…”

Shortening of subjective tone intervals followed by repetitive tone stimuli

“…Other studies (Miyauchi & Nakajima, 2005;Nakajima et al, 2004;Nakajima, ten Hoopen, & van der Wilk, 1991;ten Hoopen, Miyauchi, & Nakajima, 2008) have reported that a time interval that is immediately preceded or followed by another, shorter time interval is perceived as being shorter (the temporal assimilation effect). Because the onset-onset interval between two neighboring tone bursts in the present study was 40 msec at 25 Hz, the test interval (100 to 700 msec) might be perceived as being shorter due to the temporal assimilation effect.…”