Abstract
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan The perception of time spent looking at a stimulus is lengthened or shortened when its physical attributes, such as area, differ from those of a comparison stimulus. We measured the perceived presentation duration of a visual object whose apparent area was altered by the Ebbinghaus illusion while its physical size remained invariant, so that a central circle surrounded by larger inducers appeared smaller than a same-size central circle surrounded by smaller inducers. The results showed that the perceived duration of presentation for apparently larger circles was longer than that of apparently smaller circles, although the actual area remained invariant across all circles. We concluded that the time perception process receives input from later visual processing.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brown, S. W. (1985). Time perception and attention: The effects of prospective versus retrospective paradigms and task demands on perceived duration.Perception & Psychophysics,38, 115–124.
Coren, S., &Enns, J. T. (1993). Size contrast as a function of conceptual similarity between test and inducers.Perception & Psychophysics,54, 579–588.
Coren, S., Ward, L. M., Porac, C., &Fraser, R. (1978). The effect of optical blur on visual-geometric illusions.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,11, 390–392.
Di Lollo, V., Enns, J. T., &Rensink, R. A. (2000). Competition for consciousness among visual events: The psychophysics of reentrant visual processes.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,129, 481–507.
Enns, J. T., Brehaut, J. C., &Shore, D. I. (1999). The duration of a brief event in the mind’s eye.Journal of General Psychology,126, 355–372.
Fraisse, P. (1984). Perception and estimation of time.Annual Review of Psychology,35, 1–36.
Hochstein, S., &Ahissar, M. (2002). View from the top: Hierarchies and reverse hierarchies in the visual system.Neuron,36, 791–804.
Jordan, K., &English, P. W. (1989). Simultaneous sampling and length contrast.Perception & Psychophysics,46, 546–554.
Lamme, V. A., &Roelfsema, P. R. (2000). The distinct modes of vision offered by feedforward and recurrent processing.Trends in Neurosciences,23, 571–579.
Lebensfeld, P., &Wapner, S. (1968). Configuration and space-time interdependence.American Journal of Psychology,81, 106–110.
Long, G. M., &Beaton, R. J. (1980). The contribution of visual persistence to the perceived duration of brief targets.Perception & Psychophysics,28, 422–430.
Marr, D. (1982).Vision: A computational investigation into human representation and processing of visual information. San Francisco: Freeman.
Meck, W. H. (2005). Neuropsychology of timing and time perception.Brain & Cognition,58, 1–8.
Mo, S. S. (1975). Temporal reproduction of duration as a function of numerosity.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society,5, 165–167.
Mo, S. S., &Michalski, V. A. (1972). Judgment of temporal duration of area as a function of stimulus configuration.Psychonomic Science,27, 97–98.
Ono, F., Yamada, K., Chujo, K., & Kawahara, J.-I. (in press). Feature-based attention influences later temporal perception.Perception & Psychophysics.
Schiffman, H. R., &Bobko, D. J. (1974). Effects of stimulus complexity on the perception of brief temporal intervals.Journal of Experimental Psychology,103, 156–159.
Thomas, E. A. C., &Cantor, N. E. (1975). On the duality of simultaneous time and size perception.Perception & Psychophysics,18, 44–48.
Tong, F. (2003). Primary visual cortex and visual awareness.Nature Reviews Neuroscience,4, 219–229.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by a research fellowship to the first author from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ono, F., Kawahara, JI. The subjective size of visual stimuli affects the perceived duration of their presentation. Perception & Psychophysics 69, 952–957 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193932
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193932