Slowing the Body slows down Time (Perception)

  1. Rose De Kock
  2. Weiwei Zhou
  3. Wilsaan M Joiner
  4. Martin Wiener  Is a corresponding author
  1. University of California, Davis, United States
  2. George Mason University, United States

Abstract

Interval timing is a fundamental component of action, and is susceptible to motor-related temporal distortions. Previous studies have shown that concurrent movement biases temporal estimates, but have primarily considered self-modulated movement only. However, real-world encounters often include situations in which movement is restricted or perturbed by environmental factors. In the following experiments, we introduced viscous movement environments to externally modulate movement and investigated the resulting effects on temporal perception. In two separate tasks, participants timed auditory intervals while moving a robotic arm that randomly applied four levels of viscosity. Results demonstrated that higher viscosity led to shorter perceived durations. Using a drift-diffusion model and a Bayesian observer model, we confirmed these biasing effects arose from perceptual mechanisms, instead of biases in decision making. These findings suggest that environmental perturbations are an important factor in movement-related temporal distortions, and enhance the current understanding of the interactions of motor activity and cognitive processes.

Data availability

All source data have been deposited in Dryad. Located at doi:10.25338/B8S913

The following data sets were generated

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Rose De Kock

    Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, College of Biological Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  2. Weiwei Zhou

    Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Wilsaan M Joiner

    Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Martin Wiener

    Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, United States
    For correspondence
    mwiener@gmu.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-5963-5439

Funding

National Science Foundation (1849067)

  • Martin Wiener

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Informed consent was obtained from all subjects. All protocols were approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of California, Davis (IRB Protocol # 1336438-6)

Copyright

© 2021, De Kock et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 4,175
    views
  • 449
    downloads
  • 22
    citations

Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Rose De Kock
  2. Weiwei Zhou
  3. Wilsaan M Joiner
  4. Martin Wiener
(2021)
Slowing the Body slows down Time (Perception)
eLife 10:e63607.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63607

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.63607

Further reading

    1. Neuroscience
    Maren Klingelhöfer-Jens, Katharina Hutterer ... Tina B Lonsdorf
    Research Article

    Childhood adversity is a strong predictor of developing psychopathological conditions. Multiple theories on the mechanisms underlying this association have been suggested which, however, differ in the operationalization of ‘exposure.’ Altered (threat) learning mechanisms represent central mechanisms by which environmental inputs shape emotional and cognitive processes and ultimately behavior. 1402 healthy participants underwent a fear conditioning paradigm (acquisition training, generalization), while acquiring skin conductance responses (SCRs) and ratings (arousal, valence, and contingency). Childhood adversity was operationalized as (1) dichotomization, and following (2) the specificity model, (3) the cumulative risk model, and (4) the dimensional model. Individuals exposed to childhood adversity showed blunted physiological reactivity in SCRs, but not ratings, and reduced CS+/CS- discrimination during both phases, mainly driven by attenuated CS+ responding. The latter was evident across different operationalizations of ‘exposure’ following the different theories. None of the theories tested showed clear explanatory superiority. Notably, a remarkably different pattern of increased responding to the CS- is reported in the literature for anxiety patients, suggesting that individuals exposed to childhood adversity may represent a specific sub-sample. We highlight that theories linking childhood adversity to (vulnerability to) psychopathology need refinement.

    1. Neuroscience
    William T Redman, Santiago Acosta-Mendoza ... Michael J Goard
    Research Article

    Although grid cells are one of the most well-studied functional classes of neurons in the mammalian brain, whether there is a single orientation and spacing value per grid module has not been carefully tested. We analyze a recent large-scale recording of medial entorhinal cortex to characterize the presence and degree of heterogeneity of grid properties within individual modules. We find evidence for small, but robust, variability and hypothesize that this property of the grid code could enhance the encoding of local spatial information. Performing analysis on synthetic populations of grid cells, where we have complete control over the amount heterogeneity in grid properties, we demonstrate that grid property variability of a similar magnitude to the analyzed data leads to significantly decreased decoding error. This holds even when restricted to activity from a single module. Our results highlight how the heterogeneity of the neural response properties may benefit coding and opens new directions for theoretical and experimental analysis of grid cells.