时距呈现阶段的时间压力对时距知觉的影响

The influence of time pressure during duration-presenting stage on duration perception

时距知觉是指对从毫秒到分钟级时间的知觉,而内部时钟模型是被广泛认同的揭示时距知觉机制的模型.内部时钟模型认为时距知觉包括时钟阶段、记忆阶段和决策阶段,其中时钟阶段是时间信息的累积阶段,是时距知觉过程的基础和核心,在实验中对应于向被试呈现需要估计时距的阶段,即时距呈现阶段.与以往的研究不同,本研究通过设定时距呈现阶段的数学任务(实验一为中数判断,实验二为加减计算)的时间限制来引发不同程度的时间压力,考察了时距呈现阶段的时间压力对时距知觉的影响.两个实验的结果均显示,时间压力条件下的时距估计相对于无时间压力条件表现出显著的低估倾向,这表明时距呈现阶段的时间压力显著影响了时距知觉的准确性.

Duration perception is the perception of time in the seconds-to-minutes range, and it is very important for many activities in daily life. Previous studies have found that several factors such as attention and emotion affect the accuracy of duration perception, but very few of them focus on the influence of time pressure. According to the internal clock model, the clock stage is a core stage of duration perception in which temporal information is accumulated. Considering that this clock stage is the duration-presenting stage in an experiment, we induced time pressure during the duration-presenting stage, in which a participant had to complete arithmetic tasks within a time limit, to investigate the influence of time pressure on duration perception. Seventeen participants took part in the Experiment 1. Each trial consisted of two parts： the duration-presenting stage and duration-estimating stage. In the duration-presenting stage, participants were presented with three integers randomly selected from 0 to 9 and were asked to report the median by pressing the corresponding key. Each median judgment task was conducted under three different time pressure levels（none, low, and high） induced by three respective time limits（none, 1500, and 800 ms）. To reduce report arbitrariness, in the duration-estimating stage, participants were instructed to present a 5 s duration by pressing the space key twice, and then reported their estimation of the duration of the duration-presenting stage. In order to test the stability of the results of Experiment 1, we carried out Experiment 2. 32 participants took part in the experiment, and we used simple arithmetic tasks to induce time pressure. The three time limits used were none, 2000, and 1000 ms. In both experiments, ANOVA showed a significant main effect of time limits on the accuracy of arithmetic tasks, indicating that conducting arithmetic tasks under time limits was effective in inducing time pressure. The ANOVA on the accuracy of duration estimation showed a significant main effect of time limits in both 15 and 60 s conditions. Further T-tests showed that the accuracy of duration estimation under high time-pressure（800 ms in Experiment 1, 1000 ms in Experiment 2） significantly different from that with no time pressure, which revealed the influence of time pressure on duration estimation. These results extended our knowledge about duration perception—time pressure during the duration-presenting stage could change the accuracy of duration perception with a significant underestimation. Moreover, the influence can only be partly explained by the effect of attention on temporal information, which indicates that we need to find another mechanism to interpret the effect of time pressure on duration perception. Besides the theoretical contribution, the present study reminds that to finish tasks on time under time pressure, one ought to work more quickly since the time used is always longer than perceived.