PURPOSE: Numerous studies had generally found that the perceived durations of fear-relevant stimuli were judged longer than those of the neutral ones. However, in our previous study, we found the blank durations presented before the fearful IAPS images were judged shorter than those of the neutral ones. Different from the emotional scenes, emotional faces contain more social information. In this study, we tried to investigate that whether the blank durations followed by fearful faces were perceived shorter than the neutral ones as the fearful scenes did.
METHODS: The fearful and neutral faces were selected from the Nimstim Face Stimulus Set. Twenty participants were allowed to judge the longer one in a pair of durations of the blank which were followed by a fearful face or a neutral face. One of the durations before faces (fearful or neutral) was randomly selected as the standard duration and presented for 1000 ms, and the other could be displayed for 400,600,800,1000,1200,1400,1600 ms. The results from the two-alternative forced-choice were fit with a function for each observer, and mean PSE (point of subjective equality) were calculated as the indicator of temporal compression or dilatation.
RESULTS: One sample t tests revealed a significant positive PSE [t(19) = 2.49, p < .05], suggesting that the blank durations followed by fearful faces were perceived shorter compared to neutral ones.
CONCLUSIONS: According to the SET model, the present study may reflect that the memory stage of timing was disturbed by fearful faces, and the pulses in working memory could not get access to comparator, leading to an underestimation of the blank durations relative to neutral faces.