警觉在视听时间信息加工过程中的作用

The Role of Alertness in Visual and Auditory Temporal Information Processing

警觉和时间知觉对人们良好的适应周围环境具有重要意义。然而,警觉是否会影响时间知觉以及影响的机制却少有研究。我们通过两个实验分别探讨了警觉信号在视觉和听觉时间信息加工过程中的作用。实验一发现警觉信号使被试高估了视时距,但不影响被试的视时间知觉的敏感性;实验二发现警觉信号不但使被试高估了听时距,也增强了被试听时间知觉的敏感性。结果说明,警觉信号可能是通过调节选择性注意进而改变开关的潜伏期来影响视时间知觉,对听时间知觉的影响可能是通过调节唤醒和选择性注意进而提高起搏器的节律和改变开关的潜伏期来实现的。

Time perception plays a fundamental role in human perceptual and motor activities,and it can be influenced by various factors,such as attention and arousal.Attention can be subdivided into at least two aspects:selectivity and nonselective alertness.Most studies focus on how the selection aspects of attention affect the time perception.However,little is known whether visual or auditory perceived duration is influenced by alertness.To explore this question,we ran two experiments in the present study.In Experiment 1,we used the paradigm which combined cue paradigm with visual temporal bisection task to explore the influence of alerting cue on visual time perception.In Experiment 2,we used the paradigm which combined cue paradigm with auditory temporal bisection task to explore the impact of alerting cue on auditory time perception.The results in Experiment 1show that subjects tend to overestimate interval duration with an alerting cue compared with that without an alerting cue,and there is no difference in temporal sensitivity between two conditions.The results in Experiment 2show that subjects not only tend to overestimate interval duration but also improve the temporal sensitivity with an alerting cue.These results indicate that alertness might have an impact on the latency of switch in the visual temporal information processing,and the alerting could speed up the internal pacemaker and reduce the latency of switch in the auditory temporal information processing.The results also suggest the mechanisms of visual time and auditory time are distributed.