Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In studies on prospective time perception, a prolonging effectof arousal on time estimates is commonly reported fordurations under 2s while the effect vanishes for longerintervals. In this study, we investigated how arousal andpleasure induced by aural stimuli varying in volume andvalence influenced reproductions in the range from 1.1s to 5s.As expected, higher arousal was associated with higherestimates for 1.1s durations. However, this effect was alsofound for 3.8s durations. An additional analysis with linearmixed models revealed an interaction between volumemanipulation and subjective ratings regarding arousal andpleasure. Based on these results we propose that subjectiveexperience of the emotional quality of stimuli might beinteresting for further research on prospective timeperception. Moreover, the results showed that not only withinsubject variation should be statistically controlled whenanalyzing such data. Instead, statistical models should alsoinclude parameters controlling for stimulus material.