The simultaneous oddball: Oddball presentation does not affect simultaneity judgments

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The simultaneous oddball: Oddball presentation does not affect simultaneity judgments Jordan Wehrman 1

# The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020

Abstract The oddball duration illusion describes how a rare or nonrepeated stimulus is perceived as lasting longer than a common or repeated stimulus. It has been argued that the oddball duration illusion could emerge because of an earlier perceived onset of an oddball stimulus. However, most methods used to assess the perceived duration of an oddball stimulus are ill suited to detect onset effects. Therefore, in the current article, I tested the perceived onset of oddball and standard stimuli using a simultaneity judgment task. In Experiments 1 and 2, repetition and rarity of the target stimulus were varied, and participants were required to judge whether the target stimulus and another stimulus were concurrent. In Experiment 3, I tested whether a brief initial stimulus could act as a conditioning stimulus in the oddball duration illusion. This was to ensure an oddball duration illusion could have occurred given the short duration of stimuli in the first two experiments. In both the first two experiments, I found moderate support for no onset-based difference between oddball and nonoddball stimuli. In Experiment 3, I found that a short conditioning stimulus could still lead to the oddball duration illusion occurring, removing this possible explanation for the null result. Experiment 4 showed that an oddball duration illusion could emerge given the rarity of the stimulus and a concurrent sound. In sum, the current article found evidence against an onset-based explanation of the oddball duration illusion. Keywords Repetition effects . Decision making . Attentional capture

One minute is objectively 60 seconds. However, our subjective experience of 60 seconds can vary; ‘time’ can stretch and compress depending on whether we are sitting in traffic or on a rollercoaster. Recently, the ‘oddball duration’ illusion has garnered increased attention. The oddball duration illusion describes how a stimulus that occurs less frequently lasts subjectively longer than a repeated standard stimulus even if it has the same objective duration (Birngruber, Schröter, Schütt, & Ulrich, 2017; Cai, Eagleman, & Ma, 2015; Matthews & Gheorghiu, 2016; New & Scholl, 2009; Simchy-Gross & Margulis, 2017; Tse, Intriligator, Rivest, & Cavanagh, 2004; Wehrman, Wearden, & Sowman, 2018). This effect occurs even with just two stimuli; if the second stimulus is a repeat of the preceding stimulus, it is perceived to last less time than if the second stimulus is different than the first (Birngruber et al., 2017; Birngruber, Schröter, & Ulrich, 2014; Matthews, 2011, 2015; Matthews & Gheorghiu, 2016; Skylark & * Jordan Wehrman [email protected] 1

Cognitive Science, Macquarie University Faculty of Science, Macquarie Park, Australia

Gheorghiu, 2017). In other words, for a nonrepeated stimulus to be perceived as lasting the same duration as a repeated stimulus, the objective duration of the nonrepeated