The conscious awareness of time distortions regulates the effect of emotion on the perception of time

The Role of Emotion Regulation in Reducing Emotional Distortions of Duration Perception

“…These results indicated that both reappraisal and suppression can successfully reduce emotional distortions of duration perception. Several previous studies have investigated how to modify the emotional distortion of duration perception (i.e., Effron et al, 2006 ; Mella et al, 2011 ; Droit-Volet et al, 2015 ). As noted in the section “Introduction,” Effron et al (2006) used a passive, suppression-related method, asking participants to hold a pen in their mouths to suppress their expressions.…”

“…This makes it more cognitive and arguably more suitable for use in everyday life (as it is rather inconvenient to hold something in the mouth). In the studies by Droit-Volet et al (2015) and Mella et al (2011) , different cognitive methods were used to modify the emotional distortion of duration perception. Droit-Volet et al (2015) used declarative knowledge and found that the overestimation of duration perception was reduced when participants were told that emotional stimuli would have a shortening effect.…”

“… Mella et al (2011) used prior instructions to manipulate participants to attend to time, emotion, or both, and found that participants overestimated the duration of highly negative stimuli when they attended to emotion compared to when they attended to time or divided their attention between time and emotion. Droit-Volet et al (2015) found the awareness of emotion-related distortions in duration perception modify the emotional distortion: when the participants were told either that the perception of emotional stimuli produces an overestimation of duration (true) or that it produces an underestimation (false), the effects of emotional stimuli on duration perception were amplified or reduced, respectively. Taken together, this evidence suggests that people can regulate the emotional distortion of duration perception.…”

Distinct developmental trajectories for explicit and implicit timing

“…Second, what is the influence of explicit temporal knowledge on the perception of time? Recently, we found that participants who were more conscious of experiencing temporal distortion were more accurate in their judgment of time (Droit-Volet, Lamotte, & Izaute, 2015;Lamotte, Izaute, & Droit-Volet, 2012). Examining the role of consciousness and knowledge in time perception is a fruitful new avenue of research.…”

Emotion and Implicit Timing

“…In human beings, conscious processes may indeed influence time judgment, for example the decision to respond long or short in a bisection task. Recently, Droit-Volet et al [ 15 ] demonstrated that explicit knowledge about subjective time distortion modulates the effects of emotion on time judgment. To further examine whether emotional effects on judgments of durations are due to an automatic speeding-up of the internal clock system, we decided to test emotional effects on implicit processing of time in the present study.…”