Yates Mark J, Loetscher Tobias, Nicholls Michael E R
Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
J Vis. 2012 Jul 20;12(7):9. doi: 10.1167/12.7.9.
We investigated the claim that larger stimuli are perceived to last longer (Xuan, Zhang, He, & Chen, 2007). This claim, along with other similar claims of interactions between magnitude representations, is frequently used to support the generalized magnitude system hypothesis-the suggestion that the brain represents information about different magnitudes (e.g., time, space, and quantity) via a common mechanism. It is not clear, however, whether the size of a stimulus genuinely affects the perceived duration of the stimulus or simply biases decisions about duration. This was addressed using duration "equality judgments," which have been proposed to measure perceived duration unconfounded by decisional bias-in contrast to "comparative judgments," which are generally considered bias-prone. Using equality judgments, we failed to find support for the claim that larger stimuli are perceived to last longer, despite replicating the original effect reported by Xuan et al. (2007) using comparative judgments. Instead, unexpectedly, larger stimuli were judged-though not necessarily perceived-as shorter in duration. This result casts doubt on the conclusions of a significant body of behavioral interference studies using comparative judgments, which support a generalized magnitude system. We also identify a hitherto unrecognized potential source of decisional bias associated with equality judgments.
我们对“更大的刺激被认为持续时间更长”这一说法进行了研究（Xuan、Zhang、He和Chen，2007年）。这一说法，连同其他关于量级表征之间相互作用的类似说法，经常被用来支持广义量级系统假说——即大脑通过一种共同机制来表征关于不同量级（如时间、空间和数量）的信息。然而，尚不清楚刺激的大小是真的会影响对刺激持续时间的感知，还是仅仅影响关于持续时间的决策偏差。我们使用持续时间“相等判断”来解决这个问题，与通常被认为容易产生偏差的“比较判断”不同，“相等判断”被提议用于测量不受决策偏差影响的感知持续时间。使用相等判断，我们未能找到支持“更大的刺激被认为持续时间更长”这一说法的证据，尽管我们使用比较判断重复了Xuan等人（2007年）报告的原始效应。相反，出乎意料的是，更大的刺激被判断——尽管不一定被感知——为持续时间更短。这一结果对大量使用比较判断的行为干扰研究的结论提出了质疑，这些研究支持广义量级系统。我们还发现了一个与相等判断相关的、迄今为止未被认识到的决策偏差潜在来源
