Early posterior negativity indicates time dilation by arousal
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Early posterior negativity indicates time dilation by arousal Ezgi Özoğlu1 · Roland Thomaschke1 Received: 26 June 2020 / Accepted: 19 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract We investigated whether Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) indicated the subjective dilation of time when judging the duration of arousing stimuli. Participants performed a visual temporal bisection task along with high-level and low-level arousing auditory stimuli, while we simultaneously recorded EEG. In accordance with previous studies, arousing stimuli were temporally overestimated and led to higher EPN amplitude. Yet, we observed that time dilation and EPN amplitude were significantly correlated and this effect cannot be explained by confounds from stimulus valence. We interpret our findings in terms of the pacemaker–accumulator model of human timing, and suggest that EPN indicates an arousal-based increasing of the speed of our mental clock. Keywords Time perception · Dilation of time · Temporal bisection · EPN · Arousal
Introduction Perceiving time is a crucial prerequisite for responding adaptively in our everyday lives. We need proper timing skills to follow traffic rules while driving, to cross a road as pedestrians, or to perform a musical piece. Although humans, like most species, possess the ability to time intervals with substantial accuracy, our time estimations are not perfect. Timing context or the properties of the timed event can lead to under- or overestimation. Well-established factors leading to such timing biases include, for example, environments requiring attention to secondary assignments (Macar et al. 1994), or time intervals marked by emotion-inducing stimuli (Droit-Volet and Meck 2007). Systematic distortions of timing are commonly explained by the so-called Pacemaker–Accumulator model (PA, Buhusi and Meck 2005). According to the PA model, an internal clock processes temporal information through three stages: a clock, a memory, and a decision stage. A pacemaker generates pulses at a fixed rate. When we direct our attention to timing a currently running interval, the switch Communicated by Francesco Lacquaniti. * Ezgi Özoğlu [email protected]‑freiburg.de 1
Cognition, Action, and Sustainability Unit, Department of Psychology, Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
closes, and the accumulator stores these accumulated pulses. These pulses are then counted and–at the memory stage–compared with the typical number of pulses accumulated during a previously learned time interval. Based on this comparison, we make a temporal judgment about the interval just experienced: Is it relatively short or relatively long in relation to a previously learned interval? From a pacemaker–accumulator (PA) model perspective, arousal and attention play a leading role in temporal distortions (Treisman 2013; Zakay and Block 1995) by manipulating the total number of pulses reaching the accumulator. According to the Attentional Gate Model, attentional resources can be divided between atten
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