Psychology Department, University of Poitiers, CNRS, Poitiers, France.
Cogn Emot. 2012;26(5):847-62. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2011.625401. Epub 2012 Feb 1.
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.
人们假设，情绪对图片持续时间感知的影响源于一种基于唤醒的机制，涉及内部时钟系统的激活。本研究的目的是系统地研究不同离散情绪下唤醒对时间感知的影响。参与者被要求口头估计来自国际情感图片系统（IAPS）的情绪图片的持续时间。这些图片在唤醒水平上有所不同，例如，对于相同的离散情绪（厌恶或悲伤），图片的高/低唤醒水平，或者在描绘的情绪上有所不同，例如，对于高唤醒水平的图片，厌恶/恐惧。结果系统地揭示了与中性图片相比，情绪图片的感知持续时间会延长，并且表明这种效果的大小随着唤醒水平的增加而增加。然而，对于同一唤醒水平，时间感知会发生变化，引起厌恶的图片（例如，身体残缺）的持续时间比引起恐惧的图片（例如，蛇）的持续时间更长。这些结果表明，唤醒是调节情绪对时间感知影响的基本机制。然而，这种影响不能简化为唤醒，因为图片内容的影响也起着关键作用。
