Yan Chuyao, Wang Hao, Jiang Xueyan, Wang Zhiguo
School of Psychology Nanjing Normal University Nanjing China.
Department of Physics, School of Physics and Optoelectronic Engineering, Hainan University, Haikou 570228 China.
Vision Res. 2025 Feb;227:108540. doi: 10.1016/j.visres.2025.108540. Epub 2025 Jan 7.
Prior research has established that actions, such as eye movements, influence time perception. However, the relationship between pre-saccadic attention, which is often associated with eye movement, and subjective time perception is not explored. Our study examines the impact of pre-saccadic attention on the subjective experience of time during eye movements, particularly focusing on its influence on subjective time perception at the saccade target. Participants were presented with two clocks featuring spinning hands, positioned at distinct locations corresponding to fixation and the saccade target. They were required to report the perceived time of these clocks across the eye movements, enabling us to measure and compare both the perceived and actual timing at these specific clock locations. In Experiment 1, we observed that participants tended to report the timing of their eyes' arrival at the target location as occurring slightly ahead of the actual time. In contrast, in Experiment 2, when participants divert their attention to the fixation clock prior to the imperative saccade, this perceptual bias diminishes. These results indicate that subjective time perception is strongly impacted by attentional conditions across the two experiments. Together, these findings offer further evidence for the notion that stable time perception during eye movements is not solely an inherent property of the eye movement system but also encompasses other cognitive mechanisms, such as attention. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: While we often remain unaware of the frequent saccades (rapid eye movements) we make, they have a profound impact on our perception of the world and the flow of time. Nevertheless, the connection between pre-saccadic attention, often associated with eye movements, and our subjective perception of time remains largely unexplored. In our research, we investigated the relationship between attention and our subjective experience of time. Our findings revealed the crucial role of attention, serving as a bridge between the physical movements of our eyes and our internal sense of temporal continuity. In essence, although previous studies have demonstrated the impact of eye movements on time perception, our current study emphasizes the critical influence of attention during the preparatory phase of saccades on the subjective experience of time during eye movements.
先前的研究已经证实，诸如眼球运动等行为会影响时间感知。然而，与眼球运动常相关的扫视前注意力和主观时间感知之间的关系尚未得到探究。我们的研究考察了扫视前注意力对眼球运动过程中时间主观体验的影响，尤其关注其对扫视目标处主观时间感知的影响。向参与者展示两个带有旋转指针的时钟，分别位于对应注视点和扫视目标的不同位置。要求他们在整个眼球运动过程中报告对这些时钟所感知到的时间，以便我们测量和比较在这些特定时钟位置处的感知时间和实际时间。在实验1中，我们观察到参与者倾向于报告他们的眼睛到达目标位置的时间比实际时间稍早。相比之下，在实验2中，当参与者在命令性扫视之前将注意力转移到注视时钟上时，这种感知偏差会减小。这些结果表明，在这两个实验中，主观时间感知受到注意力条件的强烈影响。总之，这些发现为以下观点提供了进一步的证据：眼球运动过程中稳定的时间感知并非仅仅是眼球运动系统的固有属性，还涉及其他认知机制，如注意力。相关性声明：虽然我们常常意识不到自己频繁进行的扫视（快速眼球运动），但它们对我们对世界的感知和时间的流逝有着深远影响。然而，与眼球运动常相关的扫视前注意力和我们对时间的主观感知之间的联系在很大程度上仍未得到探索。在我们的研究中，我们调查了注意力与我们时间主观体验之间的关系。我们的发现揭示了注意力的关键作用，它是我们眼睛的物理运动与我们内部时间连续性感觉之间的桥梁。本质上，尽管先前的研究已经证明了眼球运动对时间感知的影响，但我们目前的研究强调了扫视准备阶段的注意力对眼球运动过程中时间主观体验的关键影响。
