Abstract
Distortions of duration perception provoked by emotion-induced arousal changes are explained by modifications of an internal clock pace. Yet, uncertainty still abounds regarding whether changes of arousal induced by physical exercise yield such temporal distortions. Here, we report two experiments aiming to test separately the impact of, on the one hand, a physical induction of arousal and, on the other hand, a task delay on duration categorisation. In Experiment 1, participants performed a duration categorisation task before and after heart-rate manipulation (increase, decrease, or no change). Duration overestimation was observed after HR manipulation, irrespective of the condition, implying that changes of physiological arousal alone cannot explain the temporal bias observed. In Experiment 2, participants performed the duration task twice without delay or arousal manipulation, and no overestimation was observed. Together, these results suggest that the overestimation observed in the context of a delayed duration categorisation task is related to a distortion of memorised standard durations caused by time lag rather than by a physiological arousal effect.
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Acknowledgements
AH and PM are research associates, and MP is a senior research associate at the National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium). We also thank Fabien D’Hondt (University of Lille) for his comments and suggestions on a previous version of the manuscript.
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This study was funded by the National Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS, Belgium).
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Handling editor: Juliane Britz (University of Fribourg). Reviewer: Marc Wittmann (University of Freiburg).
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Dormal, V., Heeren, A., Pesenti, M. et al. Time perception is not for the faint-hearted? Physiological arousal does not influence duration categorisation. Cogn Process 19, 399–409 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-017-0852-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-017-0852-3