Sandrine Gil

Embodied Temporal Perception of Emotion

The role of embodiment in the perception of the duration of emotional stimuli was investigated with a temporal bisection task. Previous research has shown that individuals overestimate the duration of emotional, compared with neutral, faces (S. Droit-Volet, S. Brunot, & P. M. Niedenthal, 2004). The authors tested a role for embodiment in this effect. Participants estimated the duration of angry, happy, and neutral faces by comparing them to 2 durations learned during a training phase. Experimental participants held a pen in their mouths so as to inhibit imitation of the faces, whereas control participants could imitate freely. Results revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional faces relative to the neutral faces only when imitation was possible. Implications for the role of embodiment in emotional perception are discussed.

Time flies in the presence of angry faces… depending on the temporal task used!

A number of studies have reported that the perception of an arousing emotional stimulus, such as an angry face, results in temporal overestimations which are probably due to the speeding up of a clock-like system. The aim of the present study was to examine whether this emotional effect can be generalized to all temporal tasks irrespective of the underlying cognitive processes involved in each task. Five different temporal tasks involving the presentation of neutral and angry faces were therefore tested: bisection, generalization, verbal estimation, production and reproduction. Our results showed an overestimation of time for the angry compared to the neutral faces in the temporal bisection, verbal estimation and production tasks but not in the temporal generalization and reproduction tasks. Moreover, the results obtained in the temporal verbal estimation and production tasks suggest that this temporal overestimation of the angry faces was associated with relatively more accurate estimates. The involvement of both arousal and attention mechanisms in the effect of emotional facial expressions on time perception is discussed in the light of the differences in the impact of the same emotional stimulus as a function of the temporal task considered.

Emotional time distortions: The fundamental role of arousal

An emotion-based lengthening effect on the perception of durations of emotional pictures has been assumed to result from an arousal-based mechanism, involving the activation of an internal clock system. The aim of this study was to systematically examine the arousal effect on time perception when different discrete emotions were considered. The participants were asked to verbally estimate the duration of emotional pictures from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). The pictures varied either in arousal level, i.e., high/low-arousal, for the same discrete emotion (disgust or sadness) or in the depicted emotion, e.g., disgust/fear for pictures matched for arousal (high-arousal). The results systematically revealed a lengthening effect on the perception of the duration of the emotional compared to the neutral pictures and indicated that the magnitude of this effect increased with arousal level. Nevertheless, variations in time perception were observed for one and the same arousal level, with the duration of disgust-inducing pictures (e.g., body mutilation) being judged longer than that of fear-inducing pictures (e.g., snake). These results suggest that arousal is a fundamental mechanism mediating the effect of emotion on time perception. However, the effect cannot be reduced to arousal, since the impact of the content of pictures also plays a critical role.

Time perception, depression and sadness

This study examined changes in time perception as a function of depressive symptoms, assessed for each participant with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The participants performed a temporal bisection task in which they had to categorize a signal duration of between 400 and 1600 ms as either as short or long. The data showed that the bisection function was shifted toward the right, and that the point of subjective equality was higher in the depressive than in the non-depressive participants. Furthermore, the higher the depression score was, the shorter the signal duration was judged to be. In contrast, the sensitivity to time was similar in these two groups of participants. These results thus indicate that the probe durations were underestimated by the depressive participants. The sadness scores assessed by the Brief Mood Inventory Scale (BMIS) also suggest that the emotional state of sadness in the depressive participants goes some way to explaining their temporal performance. Statistical analyses and modeling of data support the idea according to which these results may be explained by a slowing down of the internal clock in the depressive participants.

Anger and time perception in children.

The present study investigated age-related variations in judgments of the duration of angry facial expressions compared with neutral facial expressions. Children aged 3, 5, and 8 years were tested on a temporal bisection task using angry and neutral female faces. Results revealed that, in all age groups, children judged the duration of angry faces to be longer than that of neutral faces. Findings are discussed in the framework of internal clock models and the adaptive function of emotion.

Time Estimation of Fear Cues in Human Observers

Previous research suggests that time judgments are a function of the affective properties of to-be-timed stimuli and that time judgments are longer for stimuli that are fear-inducing (e.g., Hare, 1963; Watts and Sharrock, 1984). The goals of the present study were twofold: to replicate the effect of a fear cue on time estimation, and to evaluate the mechanism underlying the effect. Seven stimulus durations in two different duration ranges (short: 250-1000 ms; long: 400-1600 ms) were employed in the bisection procedure. Adult human participants were exposed to two successive sessions, one each with the short and long range. Images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang et al., 2008) that were rated on three scales including arousal and fear were presented as temporal stimuli. Three images that were rated high on fear and three rated low served as fear cues and neutral control images, respectively. Results indicated that for both ranges, judgments were longer for fear cues than for neutral images, and that the magnitude of the effect did not differ between ranges as measured by the bisection point. Application of scalar expectancy theory (SET; Gibbon, 1977; Church, 1984) to these results suggests that the fear effects were mediated by switch latency of an internal clock, rather than by clock speed.

Time, Emotion and the Embodiment of Timing

The past few decades have seen an explosion in studies exploring the effects of emotion on time judgments. The aim of this review is to describe the results of these studies and to look at how they try to explain the time distortions produced by emotion. We begin by examining the findings on time judgments in affective disorders, which allow us to make a clear distinction between the feelings of time distortion that originate from introspection onto subjective personal experience, and the effects of emotion on the basic mechanisms involved in time perception. We then report the results of behavioral studies that have tested the effects of emotions on time perceptions and the temporal processing of different emotional stimuli (e.g. facial expressions, affective pictures or sounds). Finally, we describe our own studies of the embodiment of timing. Overall, the different results on time and emotion suggest that temporal distortions are an indicator of how our brain and body adapt to the dynamic structure of our environment.

Emotion and Time Perception: Effects of Film-Induced Mood

Previous research into emotion and time perception has been designed to study the time perception of emotional events themselves (e.g., facial expression). Our aim was to investigate the effect of emotions per se on the subsequent time judgment of a neutral, non-affective event. In the present study, the participants were presented with films inducing a specific mood and were subsequently given a temporal bisection task. More precisely, the participants were given two temporal bisection tasks, one before and the other after viewing the emotional film. Three emotional films were tested: one eliciting fear, another sadness, and a neutral control film. In addition, the direct mood experience was assessed using the Brief Mood Introspective Scale that was administered to the participants at the beginning and the end of the session. The results showed that the perception of time did not change after viewing either the neutral control films or the sad films although the participants reported being sadder and less aroused after than before watching the sad film clips. In contrast, the stimulus durations were judged longer after than before viewing the frightening films that were judged to increase the emotion of fear and arousal level. In combination with findings from previous studies, our data suggest that the selective lengthening effect after watching frightening films was mediated by an effect of arousal on the speed of the internal clock system.

The effect of expectancy of a threatening event on time perception in human adults.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of a threatening stimulus in human adults in a temporal bisection task. In Experiment 1, for two anchor duration conditions (400/800 vs. 800/1600 ms), the participants completed trials in which the probe duration was followed by an aversive stimulus or a nonaversive stimulus. The results showed that the duration was judged longer when the participants expected an aversive rather than a nonaversive stimulus. In Experiment 2, the effect of the temporal localization of the aversive stimulus was also tested, with the aversive stimulus being presented at the beginning or at the end of the probe duration. The results revealed a temporal overestimation in each condition compared to the trials in which no aversive stimulus was presented. Furthermore, the temporal overestimation was greater when the expectation for the forthcoming threatening stimulus was longer. This temporal overestimation is explained in terms of a speeding-up of the neural timing system in response to the increase in the arousal level produced by the expectation of a threatening stimulus.

How liked and disliked foods affect time perception.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence on time perception of pictures showing liked or disliked foods in comparison with a neutral picture. Healthy adults performed a temporal bisection task in which they had to categorize the presentation duration of pictures (neutral, liked, and disliked foods) as more similar to a short (400 ms) or to a long (1,600 ms) standard duration. The data revealed that the presentation duration of food pictures was underestimated compared with the presentation duration of the neutral picture, and that this underestimation was more marked for the disliked than for the liked food pictures. These results are consistent with the idea that this time underestimation arises from an attentional-bias mechanism. The food pictures, and particularly those depicting disliked food items, distracted attention away from the processing of time.