Abstract
Past research suggests that scrambling scene structure influences the subjective durations of scenes (Varakin, Klemes, & Porter, 2013, QJEP). The present experiments tested the effects of color on duration judgments of scenes using a temporal bisection task. In Experiment 1 (n = 25), on each trial, an image appeared for one of several pre-chosen durations between 400ms and 1600ms. Participants judged whether the duration was closer to a pre-learned short (400ms) or long (1600ms) standard. Two types of scenes were presented: black-and-white (BW) or color. To evaluate differences in subjective durations, bisection points were calculated separately for each scene type for each participant. A bisection point is the duration at which 50% of responses are predicted to be "long," thus, a decrease in the bisection point implies an increase in subjective duration. In Experiment 1, there was no difference between the average bisection point for the color (M = 1008ms, SD = 229ms) and BW scenes (M = 1021ms, SD = 188ms): t(24) = 0.56, p > .05. In Experiment 2 (n = 26), we wanted to ensure that participants attended to color. The method was similar to Experiment 1, except that on some trials, participants categorized scenes as BW or color. On remaining trials, they did the temporal bisection task as in Experiment 1. Participants did not know which task they needed to perform until the end of the trial, and therefore had to pay attention to both duration and color. In Experiment 2, the average bisection point for BW scenes (M = 1036ms, SD = 213ms) was higher than for colored scenes (M = 977ms, SD = 154ms): t(25) = -2.47, p <.05. Together, these results suggest that color scenes seem to last longer than BW scenes, but only when participants pay attention to color information.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014