When time stands still: fear-specific modulation of temporal bias due to threat

The current study was designed to test the fear-specific nature of temporal bias due to threat. A temporal bisection procedure was used in which participants (N = 46) were initially trained to recognize short (400 ms) and long (1,600 ms) standard durations. In the test phase, participants were asked to judge whether the duration of computer-generated faces drawn to appear threatening, fearful, and neutral, was closer to either the short or long duration they had learnt earlier. Past research was replicated-the durations of the arousing facial expressions were overestimated relative to a low arousal (neutral) expression. Overestimation for threat was positively correlated with individual differences in fearfulness, trait anxiety, and distress. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to test the hypothesis was that individual differences in anxiety and fearfulness but not other traits would uniquely predict temporal overestimation due to threat. The results showed that fearfulness but not other traits (trait anxiety, anger, distress, activity, and sociability) was a unique and strong (partial r = .47) predictor of increased overestimation for both threatening and fearful expressions. The findings support the hypothesis that threat-related expressions activate a fear-specific system (Öhman & Mineka, 2001) or fear representations (Beck & Clark, 1997) in fearful individuals.