Asymmetrical modulation of time perception by increase versus decrease in coherence of motion

Abstract

Stimulus properties are known to affect duration judgments. In this study, we tested the effect of motion coherence levels in randomly moving dots on the perceived duration of these stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 2 we tested participants on a temporal reproduction task, using stimuli with varying degrees of motion coherence as the to-be-timed stimuli. Our results in both experiments showed that increasing motion coherence from the encoded (i.e. the first) to the reproduced (i.e. the second) stimulus leads to longer reproduction times. These effects were primarily additive in nature, and their magnitude increased with the difference between the coherence levels in the encoding versus reproduction (decoding) phases. This effect was not mirrored when there was a decrease in motion coherence. Experiment 3 tested if the differential number of exploratory saccadic eye-movements during encoding and reproduction predicted these effects. The behavioral findings of Experiment 1 and 2 were replicated in the third experiment, and the change in the number of eye movements from encoding to reproduction predicted the reproduction time when there was an increase in motion coherence. These results are explained by the effect of attention on the latency to initiate temporal integration that is only manifested when there is an increase in the level of motion coherence.