Abstract
The present study investigated the influence of selective feature-based attention on temporal perception. Although it has been shown that space-based attention modulates temporal perception, it is unclear whether feature-based attention influences temporal perception. The present study combined a visual selection task (Raymond, Fenske, Tavassoli, 2003) with a temporal interval production task to determine whether feature-based attention interacted with temporal perception. In the selection task, the display consisted of a pair of stimuli positioned to the left and right of fixation. Participants located the target stimuli as quickly as possible by pressing the left or right arrow keys. This selective response directed participants' feature-based visual attention to one of two stimuli, and was followed by a temporal production task. In the temporal production task, a single test stimulus was presented and participants pressed a key when they judged that the pre-specified interval (e.g., 2000ms) had elapsed from the onset of the test stimulus. The test stimulus was one of the stimuli that had been presented in the immediately preceding selection trial. The results indicated that temporal perception of visual stimulus depended on whether the same stimulus was attended to or ignored in a previous visual selection task: The perceived duration of previously ignored stimuli was longer than the perceived duration of either previously attended to or novel stimuli. This is the first demonstration of the effect of feature-based attention on later temporal perception. This finding indicates that temporal perception is affected by what one has previously ignored.