Mechanism behind overestimating the duration of fearful expressions: The role of arousal and memory

Background

Previous studies have demonstrated that individuals overestimate the time duration of fear-related stimuli compared with relatively neutral stimuli. However, their physiological and psychological mechanisms behind this effect remain unclear. This study investigates the overestimation the duration perception of fearful faces and its relationship with general cognitive ability (short-term memory, working memory, and attentional inhibition).

Method

Emotional pictures were selected from the Chinese Facial Affective Picture System. A total of 85 university students (43 females and 42 males,aged 20–24 years) participated in the experiments at a university. In Experiment 1,a temporal bisection task (300 ms: 1200 ms) was used to explore the effect of perceptual overestimating the duration perception of fearful faces and its relationship with general cognitive abilities (short-term memory, working memory, and attentional inhibition), In Experiment 2, the short and long standard time intervals were set to 1200 ms and 4800 ms, respectively, with the other conditions remaining the same as in Experiment 1.

Results

Both experiment revealed that participants overestimated the duration of fearful faces compared with that of neutral faces. Experiment 1 indicated no significant correlation between short-term memory, working memory, attention inhibition tests, and the overestimation effect. Experiment 2 revealed a positive correlation between working memory test scores, short-term memory test scores, and the overestimation effect,as well as temporal sensitivity.

Conclusion

Individuals tend to overestimate the duration of fearful faces, and the influence of arousal and memory is modulated by the length of the target time intervals.