The delayed reproduction of long time intervals defined by innocuous thermal sensation

Abstract

The presence of discrete events during an interval to be estimated generally causes a dilation of perceived duration (event-filling effect). Here, we investigated this phenomenon in the thermal modality using multi-seconds (19 s) innocuous cool stimuli that were either constant (continuous interval) or fluctuating to create three discrete sensory events (segmented interval). Moreover, we introduced a delay following stimulus offset, before the reproduction phase, to allow for a direct comparison with our recent study showing an underestimation of duration in a delayed reproduction task of heat pain sensations (Khoshnejad et al. in Pain 155:581-590, 2014. doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2013.12.015 ). The event-filling effect was tested by comparing the delayed reproduction of the segmented and the continuous stimuli in experimental conditions asking participants to (1) reproduce the dynamics of the sensation (i.e., changes in sensory intensity over time) or (2) reproduce only the interval duration (i.e., sensation onset-to-offset). A perceptual (control) condition required participants to report changes in sensation concurrently with the stimulus. Results of the dynamic task confirmed the underestimation of duration in the delayed reproduction task, but this effect was only found with the continuous and not with the segmented stimulus. This implies that the dilation of duration produced by segmentation might compensate for the underestimation of duration in this delayed reproduction task. However, this temporal dilation effect was only observed when participants were required to attend and reproduce the dynamics of sensation. These results suggest that the event-filling effect can be observed in the thermal sensory modality and that attention directed toward changes in sensory intensity might contribute to this effect.

The relationship between pain-induced autonomic arousal and perceived duration.

“…Then these participants were asked to rate again the initial stimulus of 0.20mA before increasing the stimulus at a rate of 0.20mA per trial until they indicated a score of 6 on the NRS or until the stimulus intensity reached 4.00mA. The three stimuli selected for the verbal estimation task included the last one rated as 0 on the NRS (no pain) and the first ones rated as 3 (low pain; following Serlin, Mendoza, Nakamura, Edwards, & Cleeland, 1995) and 6 (high pain; following Khoshnejad, Martinu, Grondin, & Rainville, 2016). Verbal estimation task.…”

The effect of pain on reference memory for duration

“…Participants completed the same procedure used in Experiment 1. Only, participants selected thermal intensities equal to 0 and 6 in the NRS (instead of 0 and 3) during the intensity rating task, that is a warm but non painful intensity and a high pain intensity (following Khoshnejad et al, 2016 ). During the temporal generalisation task, therefore, participants felt the thermode being at high pain intensity during the training phase of the two pain conditions (pain immediate and pain delay).…”