认知与发展心理学研究室知识库

时间知觉，对生物的生存至关重要。已有大量研究证实，空间线索会对时间知觉产生影响。在本研究中，我们研究时间线索，即刺激之间的同步性，对亚秒级时间知觉的影响。
研究一探讨刺激的同步性是否会影响时间知觉，及在内部时钟模型中关于结果的解释。研究使用的刺激由100个Gabor构成，每个Gabor沿着垂直于朝向的两个方向做来回运动。Gabor的运动由熵值和相关值定义。熵值是指其运动方向改变的概率，相关值是指所有Gabor在改变运动方向的同步程度。实验一中，19个被试完成四个刺激条件的时长判断任务。结果发现，同步刺激相比随机刺激，会被知觉得更短（差值约70ms） 。这种时间压缩效应并非由被知觉到的速度所中介（实验二） 。改变刺激呈现时长发现，不同时长条件之间的效应有显著差异（实验三） 。另外我们发现在对刺激和刺激消失的识别任务上，简单反应时没有显著的差异，提示时间知觉的压缩效应不是反应时之间的差异（实验四） 。
研究二探讨刺激的同步性跟空间线索在时间知觉任务上是否有交互作用。 结果发现时间压缩效应仅发生在低空间频率条件下。 同步性信息与速度有交互作用，但与数量、密度和对比度没有交互作用。
结果提示同步的刺激和不同步的刺激在时间知觉任务中表现有稳定的差异。此差异不能通过内部时钟模型合理解释。刺激同步性与速度，空间频率在时间知觉中存在交互作用

Processing and telling time, or time perception, is vital for the survival of any organism. A variety of spatial cues have been found to be effective in modulating observers’ time perception. Here, we investigated the effect of synchronization, a form of temporal cue, on the perceived duration of visual stimuli in which spatial cues were largely controlled.
In study 1, stimuli were 100 non-overlapping Gabor patches moving in one of two directions  that orthogonal to their orientations. Synchronization of Gabor patches were defined by entropy and correlation; entropy refers to the probability of moving direction change and correlation refers to the likelihood  that all Gabor elements reverse  their  motion directions simultaneously. In Experiment 1, nineteen observers performed a  duration  discrimination task  that  included  four  pairs of stimuli that differed in entropy and correlation and found that  stimuli  with high synchronization were  perceived significantly  shorter  (by ~69ms)  than random  but otherwise identical  stimuli of the same duration. This contraction effect couldn’t  be  explained  by  change in  perceived speed (Experiment 2).  Varying the display duration from  350 to  1050ms significantly affect the magnitude of perceived contraction (Experiment 3). Furthermore, we found no significant difference  in both appearance and disappearance  detection times  to  stimuli (Experiment 4), ruling out the possibility of different detection time  with stimuli of different synchronization factors.
In study 2, we investigated the interaction between synchronization cue  and  spatial frequency,  number, density, contrast and speed on time perception task. The results were that the compression effect only occurs under the condition of low spatial frequency, and synchronization cue interact with speed cue on time perception but  has no interaction with number, density and contrast.
Taken together, our findings suggest  that synchronization can also effectively modulate time perception and this modulation effect may not be explain in the internal clock model. Additionally, synchronization cue would interact with speed and spatial frequency in time perception.