Emotion and magnitude perception: number and length bisection

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Psychophysics

Background:

• Emotional stimuli significantly influence time perception, often causing temporal lengthening with threatening cues.
• Understanding the mechanisms of emotion-related time distortion is crucial for cognitive science.
• Previous research focused on time perception, leaving other quantity judgments under emotional influence less explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how aversive stimuli affect the judgment of non-temporal quantities (number and length).
• To examine the role of stimulus presentation modality (sequential vs. non-sequential) in emotion-related perceptual distortions.
• To compare distortions in quantity judgment with previously observed time distortions.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed number and length bisection tasks under sequential and non-sequential presentation conditions.
• Probe stimuli were presented alongside either aversive or non-aversive emotional stimuli.
• Judgments of quantity size (number of dots, length of lines) were recorded.

Main Results:

• Aversive stimuli led to overestimations of quantity size (dots judged bigger, lines judged longer).
• This effect was significant only when quantities were presented sequentially.
• No significant distortion was observed with non-sequential presentations.

Conclusions:

• Emotion-related distortions extend beyond time perception to other quantities like number and length.
• Sequential presentation is a critical factor for emotion to influence quantity judgments.
• Findings suggest emotion impacts the dynamic accumulation of information within working memory.