Situational context is important: perceptual grouping modulates temporal perception

Subjective time of an event in the sub-second range is often compressed or dilated by the situational context created by preceding and succeeding stimuli. How such context distorts psychological time is still an open question. Here, we pursued this issue by examining whether the perceptual grouping among successive visual stimuli modulates the perceived duration. Using a duration comparison task, we asked observers to judge the relative duration of a target and a comparison item, and estimated the apparent duration of the target from the corresponding psychometric function. The target was temporally flanked by a preceding item and a succeeding item. In different conditions, the target was more similar to either the preceding or the succeeding item. Results showed that perceptual grouping based on similarity modulated perceived duration. Specifically, when the target was grouped with the preceding item, its subjective duration was shorter than when it was grouped with the succeeding item. Interestingly, this pattern was observed when the preceding and target items were kept constant while the succeeding item was manipulated, suggesting that the effect depends, to some degree, on the holistic perceptual grouping rather than on fragmented processes. These results demonstrate that the situational context is an important factor in shaping temporal codes, thus bridging the seemingly independent perceptual feature processes and temporal representation.