Editorial to the Special Issue on Temporal Illusions

Abstract

Decades-long research in interval timing has primarily focused on the psychophysical properties of this fundamental function typically in consideration of veridical timing behavior. Along the similar vein, generative models of interval timing mostly focus on the processing dynamics of the internal stop-watch in its default mode. Both of these approaches have largely overlooked the malleability of perceived time by exogenous factors such as stimulus intensity and endogenous factors such as physiological arousal. These very relations could actually help researchers better understand the representational constitution of subjective time and the processing dynamics of the internal stop-watch. This special issue covers a wide range of work on the effects of different factors on timing and time perception in humans. Subjective time has been previously shown to dilate while observing a looming compared to receding stimulus. Sgouramani et al. tested the same effect with looming and receding biological motion and replicated the previous effects only when an auditory stimulus was congruent with the visual direction or no direction information accompanied the visual stimulus. No effect was observed with visual stimulation alone or when the accompanying auditory stimulus was incongruent with the observed direction of motion. Authors attributed the effects of the lower salience of receding stimulus given the fact that overall under reproductions. Another stimulus that has been shown to affect perceived time is click trains. Poole et al. tested whether this effect also applied to temporal order judgments both at the behavioral level and the level of latent variables (i.e., diffusion model parameters). Prior to the temporal judgments, participants experienced either