Congruency and Time Perception: Investigating the Role of Congruent and Incongruent Stimuli

Abstract

Previous studies on time perception have indicated that subjective time experience can be influenced by various factors, including emotion, color, and magnitude of stimuli. However, these factors are typically presented in a clear and unambiguous manner. Consequently, it remains unclear how an ambiguous stimulus might impact an individual's subjective perception of time. To address this gap, we employed two classical paradigms, namely the Color-Word and Face-Word Stroop stimuli, to manipulate the stimulus signals and create congruent or incongruent conditions. Participants were instructed to judge the duration of the presented stimuli under congruent or incongruent conditions using the temporal bisection paradigm. The participants' responses were recorded as either long or short, and the point of subjective equality (PSE) was estimated for both congruent and incongruent conditions in each experiment. To examine whether temporal processing differed between the congruent and incongruent conditions, we conducted paired sample t-tests on the PSE values. The results of the t-tests revealed a statistically significant difference in temporal processing between the two conditions. Specifically, the incongruent conditions were consistently overestimated compared to the congruent conditions, regardless of whether Color-Word or Face-Word stimuli were used. These findings can be explained by the attentional gate model of time perception. According to this model, allocating more attention to temporal information leads to temporal overestimation, while diverting attention to non-temporal information results in temporal underestimation. In our study, we propose that the incongruent stimuli require more attention, leading to an overestimation of time compared to the congruent stimuli. This interpretation will be further explored and discussed in relation to other relevant studies. Overall, our research contributes to a better understanding of how stimulus congruity or incongruity influences subjective time perception. It highlights the role of attention in temporal processing and provides empirical support for the attentional gate model.