How liked and disliked foods affect time perception.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence on time perception of pictures showing liked or disliked foods in comparison with a neutral picture. Healthy adults performed a temporal bisection task in which they had to categorize the presentation duration of pictures (neutral, liked, and disliked foods) as more similar to a short (400 ms) or to a long (1,600 ms) standard duration. The data revealed that the presentation duration of food pictures was underestimated compared with the presentation duration of the neutral picture, and that this underestimation was more marked for the disliked than for the liked food pictures. These results are consistent with the idea that this time underestimation arises from an attentional-bias mechanism. The food pictures, and particularly those depicting disliked food items, distracted attention away from the processing of time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Circadian time perception.

The variability of anticipating a meal was investigated. Sprague-Dawley rats earned food by inspecting a food source during a 3-hr interval. Food was not available at other times. In Experiment 1, the meal started 3 or 7 hr after light offset in a 12-hr light-dark cycle. Experiment 2 was conducted in constant darkness with 14-, 22-, 22.5-, 24-, 25.5-, 26-, or 34-hr intermeal intervals. Inspections increased before the meal. Rats timed intervals in the circadian range (22–26 hr) with lower variability than that for intervals outside this range (3–14 and 34 hr). Higher precision in timing selected intervals violates the scalar property. Proximity to a circadian oscillator improves timing precision. Variability may be used to identify oscillators with noncircadian periods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction between affect and cognition in word perception.

Investigated the hypothesis that the accuracy with which a briefly shown word is perceived depends on both the affective tone of the word and the activation of the corresponding memory code. To increase activation, expectation and word frequency were manipulated. Ss were exposed to a 25-ms flash of a target word. They then chose, from a word pair, the target word. In half the trials, this word pair was given before the flash to create an expectation. Consistent with the hypothesis, when the words were infrequent, accuracy in perception was lower for affective than for neutral words regardless of expectation. When the words were frequent, there was no effect of affective tone in the absence of expectation; in the presence of expectation, accuracy was higher for affective than for neutral words. The valence of the affective words had no effect. Results are interpreted in terms of attentional mechanisms implicated in conscious perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anger and time perception in children.

The present study investigated age-related variations in judgments of the duration of angry facial expressions compared with neutral facial expressions. Children aged 3, 5, and 8 years were tested on a temporal bisection task using angry and neutral female faces. Results revealed that, in all age groups, children judged the duration of angry faces to be longer than that of neutral faces. Findings are discussed in the framework of internal clock models and the adaptive function of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hypnosis, absorption, and time perception.

Previous research attempting to relate absorption to hypnotic time perception has been inconclusive. The present study provides a more thorough test of the absorption hypothesis by assessing the separate and combined effects of hypnotic responsiveness, hypnotic vs waking context, and involvement of the stimulus content. 60 college students, tested in either a waking or a hypnotic condition, provided retrospective time estimates of 2 taped story narrations, selected to represent opposite extremes of interest and involvement. Assignment to high- or low-responsive groups on the basis of Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility scores was cross-checked with scores on the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale. Overall, duration estimates were shorter for the involving than for the noninvolving content, and high-responsive Ss tended to give shorter estimates than did low-responsive Ss. However, the only substantial underestimation occurred when the high-responsive Ss listened to the involving tape in the hypnotic context, a finding that supports a general absorption hypothesis. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognition, motivation, and time perception.

The present research tested 2 hypotheses generated from a previous but unpublished work by another researcher viz., "1. The force acting on a person in a barrier situation to reach a goal G is an increasing function of the person's need for G 'times' the relevance of his ideation with respect to G. 2. The greater the magnitude of the force to reach a goal acting on a person in a barrier situation… , the greater will be the estimation of the time spent in the barrier situation." A food testing experiment "in which deprivation of food, thinking about food, and the desire to eat corresponded to… need, relevance of ideation, and force," is presented. Both hypotheses were supported. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The nonverbal affect lexicon: Theoretical perspectives from neuropsychological studies of affect perception.

Reviews evidence from neuropsychological studies of affect perception, which suggest that the right hemisphere contains a vocabulary of nonverbal affective signals (facial expressions, prosody, and gestures). This vocabulary is referred to as the nonverbal affect lexicon, and evidence is reviewed suggesting that it is modular in organization, with independent lexicons for faces and prosody. The authors feel that affect lexicon represents one component of a cortically based affect-processing network that is dedicated to reading the nonverbal social displays of other members of the species. Discordances between this cortical affect system and other components of the emotion enterprise are discussed, as well as the relationship of the nonverbal affect lexicon to valence-related asymmetries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Frames of reference and distinctive figural characteristics affect shape perception.

In 4 experiments it was found that global frameworks and local distinctive figural characteristics influenced the perception of shape and of pointing. In Exps 1 and 2, Ss were asked to mark the center of the middle figure in array of 3 aligned figures (either triangles or squares). Displacements of the center indicated a perceived deformation of the shapes. In Exp 3, Ss were asked to adjust the height of triangles in arrays similar to those in Exp 1. Height adjustments made along the axis of apparent pointing resulted in extents that were shorter than the height necessary to form equilateral triangles. In Exp 4, stimuli were isosceles triangles in which the apparent distortion had been nulled; however, Ss continued to perceive them as pointing in a direction consistent with their alignment, and hence shape distortion cannot be the cause of pointing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressed patients have atypical hemispace biases in the perception of emotional chimeric faces.

The perception of chimeric faces was studied in depressed patients in light of the presumed right-hemisphere mediation of this function and evidence for right-hemisphere disorganization in major depression. Subjects were 27 unipolar depressive (Research Diagnostic Criteria) and 29 normal control right-handed male adults. Subjects performed a perception task that requires an emotional judgment about chimeric faces during free-field viewing and provides an index of hemispace bias (Levy, Heller, Banich, & Burton, 1983b). Although both groups showed a significant left-hemispheric bias, depressives were significantly less lateralized than controls. Levy et al. (1983a) have speculated that this left-hemispace bias reflects the combined influence of right-hemisphere specialization and hemispheric differences in cortical activation. We discuss our findings in light of evidence for asymmetrical cortical control of autonomic arousal and for autonomic defects in depressed patients. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressed mothers' touching increases infants' positive affect and attention in still-face interactions

The effects of depressed mothers' touching on their infants' behavior were investigated during the still-face situation. 48 depressed and nondepressed mothers and their 3-month-old infants were randomly assigned to control and experimental conditions. 4 successive 90-sec periods were implemented: (A) normal play, (B) still-face-no-touch, (C) still-face-with-touch, and (A) normal play. Depressed and nondepressed mothers were instructed and shown how to provide touch for their infants during the still-face-with-touch period. Different affective and attentive responses of the infants of depressed versus the infants of nondepressed mothers were observed. Infants of depressed mothers showed more positive affect (smiles and vocalizations) and gazed more at their mothers' hands during the still-face-with-touch period than the infants of nondepressed mothers, who grimaced, cried, and gazed away from their mothers' faces more often. The results suggest that by providing touch stimulation for their infants, the depressed mothers can increase infant positive affect and attention and, in this way, compensate for negative effects often resulting from their typical lack of affectivity (flat facial and vocal expressions) during interactions.     

How emotional auditory stimuli modulate time perception.

Emotional and neutral sounds rated for valence and arousal were used to investigate the influence of emotions on timing in reproduction and verbal estimation tasks with durations from 2 s to 6 s. Results revealed an effect of emotion on temporal judgment, with emotional stimuli judged to be longer than neutral ones for a similar arousal level. Within scalar expectancy theory (J. Gibbon, R. Church, & W. Meck, 1984), this suggests that emotion-induced activation generates an increase in pacemaker rate, leading to a longer perceived duration. A further exploration of self-assessed emotional dimensions showed an effect of valence and arousal. Negative sounds were judged to be longer than positive ones, indicating that negative stimuli generate a greater increase of activation. High-arousing stimuli were perceived to be shorter than low-arousing ones. Consistent with attentional models of timing, this seems to reflect a decrease of attention devoted to time, leading to a shorter perceived duration. These effects, robust across the 2 tasks, are limited to short intervals and overall suggest that both activation and attentional processes modulate the timing of emotional events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Taking a long look at action and time perception.

Everyone has probably experienced chronostasis, an illusion of time that can cause a clock's second hand to appear to stand still during an eye movement. Though the illusion was initially thought to reflect a mechanism for preserving perceptual continuity during eye movements, an alternative hypothesis has been advanced that overestimation of time might be a general effect of any action. Contrary to both of these hypotheses, the experiments reported here suggest that distortions of time perception related to an eye movement are not distinct from temporal distortions for other kinds of responses. Moreover, voluntary action is neither necessary nor sufficient for overestimation effects. These results lead to a new interpretation of chronostasis based on the role of attention and memory in time estimation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of perception and retrieval in matching and recognition.

A four-part experiment was carried out to study the relationship between the time course of object-feature perception and the time course of retrieval of object information from memory. The experiment consisted of 2 perceptual matching tasks, and 2 perceptual recognition tasks. In all 4 tasks, participants provided speeded judgments of the identity of 2 objects. A stochastic feature-sampling model was used to estimate the time needed for feature perception and the time needed for retrieval of feature information. No evidence was found for a systematic relationship between perception times and retrieval times for individual features. Indeed, the model applications indicated that retrieval times were constant for different features, whereas perception rates varied across the features. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative emotionality influences the effects of emotion on time perception.

In this study I used a temporal bisection task to test if greater overestimation of time due to negative emotion is moderated by individual differences in negative emotionality. The effects of fearful facial expressions on time perception were also examined. After a training phase, participants estimated the duration of facial expressions (anger, happiness, fearfulness) and a neutral-baseline facial expression. In accordance to the operation of an arousal-based process, the duration of angry expressions was consistently overestimated relative to other expressions and the baseline condition. In support of a role for individual differences in negative emotionality on time perception, temporal bias due to angry and fearful expressions was positively correlated to individual differences in self-reported negative emotionality. The results are discussed in relation both to the literature on attentional bias to facial expressions in anxiety and fearfulness and also, to the hypothesis that angry expressions evoke a fear-specific response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time perception and time processing as an aspect of the therapeutic process.

Examines the subtle and paradoxical issues surrounding clients' perceptions and processing of time. This paper illustrates that, though time perception and time processing are uniquely individual tasks with widespread variation, it is the diversity of these processes that enriches therapy and can provide both client and therapist with a deeper understanding of adaptability and coping. Five guidelines and accompanying techniques are identified that offer specific methods of addressing and altering temporal processing related to distress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional processes in time perception: Effects of mental workload and event structure.

The role of attention in timing was evaluated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants reproduced the durations of melodies with either a coherent or an incoherent structure. Participants were tested under control (timing only) and detection (timing plus target detection) workload conditions. Reproductions were shorter and more inaccurate under detection conditions, and incoherent event structure extended the effect to a wider range of durations. In Experiment 2, participants reproduced the durations of auditory prose passages that represented 3 levels of mental workload and 3 levels of event structure. Both increases in workload and the degradation of structure led to inaccurate reproductions. The results point to the central role of attention in temporal experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressed Mood and Smoking Experimentation Among Preteens.

The authors examined children's depressed mood, parental depressed mood, and parental smoking in relation to children's smoking susceptibility and experimentation over 20 months in a cohort of 418 preteens (ages 10-12 at baseline) and their parents. Depressed mood in preteens was strongly related to experimentation but not to susceptibility. In cross-sectional analyses parental depressed mood was related to children's experimentation, but in longitudinal analyses parental depressed mood at baseline did not differentiate children who experimented from those who did not. Although parental smoking was strongly related to experimentation, it was not related to susceptibility either cross-sectionally or longitudinally. Depressed mood among preteens and parents appeared to be more strongly related to children's smoking behaviors than to their intentions to smoke. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attributional mediators of evaluation, expectancy, and affect: A response time analysis.

In two studies we examined the informational value of ability and effort cues as guides to achievement-related judgments about others. Using a response time methodology, we first presented subjects with information concerning how much ability a failing student had, how hard the student tried, or both. Subsequently, subjects reported interpersonal evaluations, expectancy predictions, and affective judgments of guilt, shame, and unhappiness. Interpersonal evaluations were made the most rapidly when effort information was provided, and expectancy predictions were made the most rapidly when ability information was provided. These data were consistent with an attributional analysis of effort as a more informative causal cue for evaluation and ability as a more informative cue for expectancy. There was only modest support for related hypotheses concerning the cue value of effort and ability as guides to affective judgments. Finally, the response time data provided evidence for an attributional conception of increasingly complex causally mediated judgments. We discuss implications for causal inference and for self-perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attachment, Sleep Quality, and Depressed Affect.

This study examined the role of attachment insecurity in sleep problems among married adults (N=78 couples). Using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and structural equation modeling, attachment anxiety was associated with higher levels of self-reported sleep difficulties for men and women, whereas attachment avoidance was not. Depressed affect was included as a control variable, and the effect of attachment anxiety remained significant. Men and women did not differ significantly in the magnitude of the effect of attachment anxiety on sleep quality. In addition, there were no cross-partner effects of attachment insecurity on sleep quality or depressed affect. Implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)