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Time's arrow and pupillary response.

Antje Nuthmann¹, Elke van der Meer

¹Department of Psychology, Humboldt University at Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Psychophysiology

|June 10, 2005

Summary

Our minds mentally code the psychological arrow of time in everyday events. Chronological event pairings are processed faster than reverse pairings, indicating mental coding of temporal progression.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Neuroscience
Psycholinguistics

Background:

The psychological arrow of time describes our perception of temporal progression.
Understanding how this is mentally represented in everyday events is crucial for cognitive science.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether and how the psychological arrow of time is mentally coded in individual everyday events.
To explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying temporal event processing.

Main Methods:

A relatedness judgment task was employed, presenting verb-adjective/participle pairs.
Temporal orientation was manipulated (chronological vs. reverse).
Reaction times, error rates, and pupillary responses were recorded.

Main Results:

Chronological items were processed significantly faster than reverse items.
Pupil dilation patterns suggested top-down influences during temporal processing.
Principal component analyses supported these findings on cognitive processing.

Conclusions:

The study provides evidence that the psychological arrow of time is mentally coded within single everyday events.
Cognitive and physiological data suggest active mental processes underlie the perception of temporal order.

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