Cai Zhenguang G, Wang Ruiming
School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom.
Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
PLoS One. 2014 Jan 29;9(1):e83159. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0083159. eCollection 2014.
Previous research has suggested that the perception of time is influenced by concurrent magnitude information (e.g., numerical magnitude in digits, spatial distance), but the locus of the effect is unclear, with some findings suggesting that concurrent magnitudes such as space affect temporal memories and others suggesting that numerical magnitudes in digits affect the clock speed during time encoding. The current paper reports 6 experiments in which participants perceived a stimulus duration and then reproduced it. We showed that though a digit of a large magnitude (e.g., 9), relative to a digit of a small magnitude (e.g., 2), led to a longer reproduced duration when the digits were presented during the perception of the stimulus duration, such a magnitude effect disappeared when the digits were presented during the reproduction of the stimulus duration. These findings disconfirm the account that large numerical magnitudes accelerate the speed of an internal clock during time encoding, as such an account incorrectly predicts that a large numerical magnitude should lead to a shorter reproduced duration when presented during reproduction. Instead, the findings suggest that numerical magnitudes, like other magnitudes such as space, affect temporal memories when numerical magnitudes and temporal durations are concurrently held in memory. Under this account, concurrent numerical magnitudes have the chance to influence the memory of the perceived duration when they are presented during perception but not when they are presented at the reproduction stage.
先前的研究表明，时间感知会受到同时出现的大小信息（例如数字中的数值大小、空间距离）的影响，但这种影响的位置尚不清楚。一些研究结果表明，诸如空间等同时出现的大小会影响时间记忆，而另一些研究结果则表明，数字中的数值大小会在时间编码过程中影响时钟速度。本文报告了6项实验，在这些实验中，参与者感知一个刺激持续时间，然后进行再现。我们发现，尽管在刺激持续时间的感知过程中呈现数字时，相对于小数值的数字（例如2），大数值的数字（例如9）会导致更长的再现持续时间，但当在刺激持续时间的再现过程中呈现数字时，这种大小效应就消失了。这些发现否定了那种认为大数值在时间编码过程中会加快内部时钟速度的观点，因为这种观点错误地预测，在再现过程中呈现大数值时应该会导致更短的再现持续时间。相反，这些发现表明，数值大小与其他大小（如空间）一样，当数值大小和时间持续时间同时保存在记忆中时，会影响时间记忆。根据这一观点，同时出现的数值大小在感知过程中呈现时，有机会影响对感知持续时间的记忆，但在再现阶段呈现时则不会。
