Physiological Arousal and Its Effects on Time Perception: A Systematic Review

Time perception is a fundamental aspect of human cognition, influencing motor coordination, decision-making, and planning. Unlike sensory modalities such as vision or hearing, which rely on dedicated sensory organs, the perception of time lacks a specific neural substrate, making it highly dependent on internal physiological and psychological states. Research suggests that physiological arousal plays a crucial role in temporal distortions, with pacemaker-accumulator models proposing that heightened arousal accelerates the internal clock, leading to an overestimation of time. We provide a systematic review of the available literature on the complex relationship between physiological indices of arousal and time distortion. Overall while a relatively consistent association emerged between baseline cardiac autonomic activity and temporal accuracy. When physiological arousal was experimentally manipulated, its relationship with temporal distortion was substantially less consistent. These differences were observed across pain, stress, emotional, and physical-activity paradigms and appeared to vary according to the characteristics of the eliciting stimulus. This pattern highlights the need to distinguish physiological arousal from the other cognitive processes involved and provides a basis for future research investigating also the other potential explanatory factors in the relationship between arousal and time perception.