The effects of valence and arousal on the emotional modulation of time perception: Evidence for multiple stages of processing.

Abstract

Previous research has demonstrated that both emotional valence and arousal can influence the subjective experience of time. The current research extends this work by (1) identifying how quickly this emotional modulation of time perception can occur and (2) examining whether valence and arousal have different effects at different stages of perception. These questions were addressed using a temporal bisection task. In each block of this task, participants are trained to distinguish between two different exposure durations. Participants are then shown stimuli presented at a number of durations that fall between the two learned times, and are asked to indicate whether the test stimulus was closer in duration to the shorter or longer learned item. In the current study, participants completed blocks of trials in which the durations were "Short" (100-300 ms) or "Long" (400-1600 ms). Stimuli consisted of neutral photographs as well as four categories of emotional images: high-arousal negative, high-arousal positive, low-arousal negative, and low-arousal positive. In Short blocks, arousing and nonarousing negative images were judged to have been shown for shorter durations than they actually were (i.e., the duration was underestimated); this effect occurred at durations as brief as 133 ms. In Long blocks, the display time for highly arousing negative items was overestimated, whereas durations were underestimated for highly arousing positive items and less arousing negative items. These data suggest that arousal and valence have different effects at different stages of perception, possibly due to the different neural structures involved at each stage of the emotional modulation of time perception.

Stroke me for longer this touch feels too short: The effect of pleasant touch on temporal perception

“…the positive affect induced through the touch slowed down the children's internal timing mechanism making the waiting period seem shorter. Similar findings have been reported in the auditory domain by Droit-Volet et al (2013) who observed that pleasant music excerpts were judged as shorter than neutral excerpts of the same duration, and also in the visual domain (Angrilli et al, 1997;Buetti & Lleras, 2012;Smith, McIver, Di Nella, & Crease, 2011). Taken together with the current findings these studies suggest that positive affect has consistent shortening effects on temporal perception across sensory modalities.…”

Clock Speed as a Window into Dopaminergic Control of Emotion and Time Perception

“…For angry facial expressions this pattern has been replicated by the same research group and also, separate research groups (for a review see; Droit-Volet, 2013; Droit-Volet et al, 2013) using different tasks (Gil & DroitVolet, 2011). The overestimation effect generalizes to different types of emotional stimuli including emotional sounds (Noulhiane et al, 2007), aversively conditioned stimuli (Droit-Volet et al, 2010;Ogden et al, 2014), highly arousing negative images (Angrilli et al, 1997;Droit-Volet et al, 2011;Gil & Droit-Volet, 2012;Shi et al, 2012;Smith et al, 2011) and highly feared stimuli (Buetti & Lleras, 2012;Langer et al, 1961;Watts & Sharrock, 1984).…”

Duration perception of emotional stimuli: Using evaluative conditioning to avoid sensory confounds

“…In several studies, only negative stimulus material was examined (Gil & DroitVolet, 2011Gil, Niedenthal, & DroitVolet, 2007;Grommet et al, 2011;Mella et al, 2011). In several other studies, different effects or effect sizes for positive and negative stimuli were observed (Angrilli et al, 1997;Doi & Shinohara, 2009;Droit-Volet et al, 2004;Effron et al, 2006;Noulhiane et al, 2007;Smith, McIver, Di Nella, & Crease, 2011;Tipples, 2008). Thus, for example, Effron et al (2006) and Tipples (2008) found that positive stimuli caused smaller effects than negative stimuli.…”