The role of arousal in the estimation of time-to-collision of threatening stimuli

  • Caiwen Li 1,2 ,
  • Yuming Xuan , 1,2 ,
  • Patrick Bruns 3 ,
  • Xiaolan Fu 1,2
Expand
  • 1. State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
  • 2. Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
  • 3. Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
xuanym@psych.ac.cn

Received date: 28 Feb 2023

Accepted date: 26 Mar 2024

Published date: 20 Mar 2024

Copyright

2024 2024 The Authors. PsyCh Journal published by Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

Abstract

The accurate estimation of time-to-collision (TTC) is essential for the survival of organisms. Previous studies have revealed that the emotional properties of approaching stimuli can influence the estimation of TTC, indicating that approaching threatening stimuli are perceived to collide with the observers earlier than they actually do, and earlier than non-threatening stimuli. However, not only are threatening stimuli more negative in valence, but they also have higher arousal compared to non-threatening stimuli. Up to now, the effect of arousal on TTC estimation remains unclear. In addition, inconsistent findings may result from the different experimental settings employed in previous studies. To investigate whether the underestimation of TTC is attributed to threat or high arousal, three experiments with the same settings were conducted. In Experiment 1, the underestimation of TTC estimation of threatening stimuli was replicated when arousal was not controlled, in comparison to non-threatening stimuli. In Experiments 2 and 3, the underestimation effect of threatening stimuli disappeared when compared to positive stimuli with similar arousal. These findings suggest that being threatening alone is not sufficient to explain the underestimation effect, and arousal also plays a significant role in the TTC estimation of approaching stimuli. Further studies are required to validate the effect of arousal on TTC estimation, as no difference was observed in Experiment 3 between the estimated TTC of high and low arousal stimuli.

Cite this article

Caiwen Li , Yuming Xuan , Patrick Bruns , Xiaolan Fu . The role of arousal in the estimation of time-to-collision of threatening stimuli[J]. Psych Journal, 2024 , 13(3) : 376 -386 . DOI: 10.1002/pchj.762

1
Battaglini, L., & Ghiani, A. (2021). Motion behind occluder: Amodal perception and visual motion extrapolation. Visual Cognition, 29(8), 475–499.

DOI

2
Batty, M., & Taylor, M. J. (2003). Early processing of the six basic facial emotional expressions. Cognitive Brain Research, 17(3), 613–620.

DOI

3
Bennett, S. J., Baures, R., Hecht, H., & Benguigui, N. (2010). Eye movements influence estimation of time-to-contact in prediction motion. Experimental Brain Research, 206(4), 399–407.

DOI

4
Bentin, S., Allison, T., Puce, A., Perez, E., & McCarthy, G. (1996). Electrophysiological studies of face perception in humans. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8(6), 551–565.

DOI

5
Brendel, E. (2019). Safety strategies in time-to-contact estimation. (Publication No. 13844185). [Doctoral dissertation, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.

6
Brendel, E., DeLucia, P. R., Hecht, H., Stacy, R. L., & Larsen, J. T. (2012). Threatening pictures induce shortened time-to-contact estimates. Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 74(5), 979–987.

DOI

7
Brendel, E., Hecht, H., DeLucia, P. R., & Gamer, M. (2014). Emotional effects on time-to-contact judgments: Arousal, threat, and fear of spiders modulate the effect of pictorial content. Experimental Brain Research, 232(7), 2337–2347.

DOI

8
Cheng, R. K., Tipples, J., Narayanan, N. S., & Meck, W. H. (2016). Clock speed as a window into dopaminergic control of emotion and time perception. Timing and Time Perception, 4(1), 98–121.

DOI

9
Codispoti, M., & de Cesarei, A. (2007). Arousal and attention: Picture size and emotional reactions. Psychophysiology, 44(5), 680–686.

DOI

10
DeLucia, P. R., Brendel, E., Hecht, H., Stacy, R. L., & Larsen, J. T. (2014). Threatening scenes but not threatening faces shorten time-to-contact estimates. Attention Perception & Psychophysics, 76(6), 1698–1708.

DOI

11
DeLucia, P. R., & Liddell, G. W. (1998). Cognitive motion extrapolation and cognitive clocking in prediction motion tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24(3), 901–914.

DOI

12
Droit-Volet, S. (2013). Time perception, emotions and mood disorders. Journal of Physiology-Paris, 107(4), 255–264.

DOI

13
Droit-Volet, S., Brunot, S., & Niedenthal, P. M. (2004). Perception of the duration of emotional events. Cognition & Emotion, 18(6), 849–858.

DOI

14
Droit-Volet, S., & Gil, S. (2016). The emotional body and time perception. Cognition & Emotion, 30(4), 687–699.

DOI

15
Droit-Volet, S., Lamotte, M., & Izaute, M. (2015). The conscious awareness of time distortions regulates the effect of emotion on the perception of time. Consciousness and Cognition, 38, 155–164.

DOI

16
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A. G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191.

DOI

17
Field, D. T., & Wann, J. P. (2005). Perceiving time to collision activates the sensorimotor cortex. Current Biology, 15(5), 453–458.

DOI

18
Fisher, K., Towler, J., & Eimer, M. (2016). Facial identity and facial expression are initially integrated at visual perceptual stages of face processing. Neuropsychologia, 80, 115–125.

DOI

19
Gibbon, J., Church, R. M., & Meck, W. H. (1984). Scalar timing in memory. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 423, 52–77.

DOI

20
Gil, S., & Droit-Volet, S. (2012). Emotional time distortions: The fundamental role of arousal. Cognition & Emotion, 26(5), 847–862.

DOI

21
Hecht, H., Brendel, E., Wessels, M., & Bernhard, C. (2021). Estimating time-to-contact when vision is impaired. Scientific Reports, 11, 21213.

DOI

22
Hecht, H., & Savelsbergh, G. J. P. (2004). Theories of time-to-contact judgment. In H. Hecht & G. J. P. Savelsbergh (Eds.), Advances in psychology: Vol. 135. Time-to-contact (pp. 1–11). Elsevier Science.

23
Itier, R. J., & Taylor, M. J. (2004). N170 or N1? Spatiotemporal differences between object and face processing using ERPs. Cerebral Cortex, 14(2), 132–142.

DOI

24
Kim, N. G. (2015). Perceiving time-to-contact under locally impoverished optical flow. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 120(3), 906–927.

DOI

25
Lake, J. I., LaBar, K. S., & Meck, W. H. (2016). Emotional modulation of interval timing and time perception. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 64, 403–420.

DOI

26
Lee, D. N. (1976). A theory of visual control of braking based on information about time-to-collision. Perception, 5(4), 437–459.

DOI

27
Lehockey, K. A., Winters, A. R., Nicoletta, A. J., Zurlinden, T. E., & Everhart, D. E. (2018). The effects of emotional states and traits on time perception. Brain Informatics, 5(2), 9–22.

DOI

28
Malek, N., Mendoza-Halliday, D., & Martinez-Trujillo, J. (2012). Binocular rivalry of spiral and linear moving random dot patterns in human observers. Journal of Vision, 12(10), 20.

DOI

29
Min, Y., & Kim, S. H. (2022). How do looming and receding emotional faces modulate duration perception? Perceptual and Motor Skills, 130(1), 54–79.

DOI

30
Ogden, R. S., Henderson, J., McGlone, F., & Richter, M. (2019). Time distortion under threat: Sympathetic arousal predicts time distortion only in the context of negative, highly arousing stimuli. PLoS ONE, 14(5), e0216704.

DOI

31
Parker, A., & Alais, D. (2007). A bias for looming stimuli to predominate in binocular rivalry. Vision Research, 47(20), 2661–2674.

DOI

32
Pourtois, G., Grandjean, D., Sander, D., & Vuilleumier, P. (2004). Electrophysiological correlates of rapid spatial orienting towards fearful faces. Cerebral Cortex, 14(6), 619–633.

DOI

33
Regan, D., & Gray, R. (2001). Hitting what one wants to hit and missing what one wants to miss. Vision Research, 41(25–26), 3321–3329.

DOI

34
Rolin, R. A., Fooken, J., Spering, M., & Pai, D. K. (2019). Perception of looming motion in virtual reality egocentric interception tasks. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 25(10), 3042–3048.

DOI

35
Rossion, B. (2014). Understanding face perception by means of human electrophysiology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(6), 310–318.

DOI

36
Rossion, B., Gauthier, I., Tarr, M. J., Despland, P., Bruyer, R., Linotte, S., & Crommelinck, M. (2000). The N170 occipito-temporal component is delayed and enhanced to inverted faces but not to inverted objects: An electrophysiological account of face-specific processes in the human brain. Neuroreport, 11(1), 69–74.

DOI

37
Sarigiannidis, I., Grillon, C., Ernst, M., Roiser, J. P., & Robinson, O. J. (2020). Anxiety makes time pass quicker while fear has no effect. Cognition, 197(12), 104116.

DOI

38
Scarfe, P., & Glennerster, A. (2015). Using high-fidelity virtual reality to study perception in freely moving observers. Journal of Vision, 15(9), 1–11.

DOI

39
Schiff, W., Caviness, J. A., & Gibson, J. J. (1962). Persistent fear responses in rhesus monkeys to the optical stimulus of “looming”. Science, 136(3520), 982–983.

DOI

40
Schindler, S., Bruchmann, M., Gathmann, B., Moeck, R., & Straube, T. (2021). Effects of low-level visual information and perceptual load on P1 and N170 responses to emotional expressions. Cortex, 136, 14–27.

DOI

41
Schweinberger, S. R., & Soukup, G. R. (1998). Asymmetric relationships among perceptions of facial identity, emotion, and facial speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24(6), 1748–1765.

DOI

42
Smeets, J. B. J., Brenner, E., Trebuchet, S., & Mestre, D. R. (1996). Is judging time-to-contact based on “tau”? Perception, 25(5), 583–590.

DOI

43
Smith, E., Weinberg, A., Moran, T., & Hajcak, G. (2013). Electrocortical responses to NIMSTIM facial expressions of emotion. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 88(1), 17–25.

DOI

44
Tanskanen, T., Nasanen, R., Ojanpaa, H., & Hari, R. (2007). Face recognition and cortical responses: Effect of stimulus duration. Neuroimage, 35(4), 1636–1644.

DOI

45
Tottenham, N., Tanaka, J. W., Leon, A. C., McCarry, T., Nurse, M., Hare, T. A., … Nelson, C. (2009). The NimStim set of facial expressions: Judgments from untrained research participants. Psychiatry Research, 168(3), 242–249.

DOI

46
Treisman, M. (1963). Temporal discrimination and the indifference interval: Implications for a model of the “internal clock”. Psychological Monographs, 77(13), 1–31.

DOI

47
Tresilian, J. R. (1997). Revised tau hypothesis: A consideration of Wann's (1996) analyses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 23(4), 1272–1281.

DOI

48
Tresilian, J. R. (1999). Visually timed action: Time-out for “tau”? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 3(8), 301–310.

DOI

49
Tyll, S., Bonath, B., Schoenfeld, M. A., Heinze, H. J., Ohl, F. W., & Noesselt, T. (2013). Neural basis of multisensory looming signals. Neuroimage, 65, 13–22.

DOI

50
Vagnoni, E., Andreanidou, V., Lourenco, S. F., & Longo, M. R. (2017). Action ability modulates time-to-collision judgments. Experimental Brain Research, 235(9), 2729–2739.

DOI

51
Vagnoni, E., Lingard, L., Munro, S., & Longo, M. R. (2020). Semantic modulation of time-to-collision judgments. Neuropsychologia, 147, 107588.

DOI

52
Vagnoni, E., Lourenco, S. F., & Longo, M. R. (2012). Threat modulates perception of looming visual stimuli. Current Biology, 22(19), R826–R827.

DOI

53
Vagnoni, E., Lourenco, S. F., & Longo, M. R. (2015). Threat modulates neural responses to looming visual stimuli. European Journal of Neuroscience, 42(5), 2190–2202.

DOI

54
von Muhlenen, A., & Lleras, A. (2007). No-onset looming motion guides spatial attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33(6), 1297–1310.

DOI

55
Wagenmakers, E. J., Love, J., Marsman, M., Jamil, T., Ly, A., Verhagen, J., … Morey, R. D. (2018). Bayesian inference for psychology. Part II: Example applications with JASP. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(1), 58–76.

DOI

56
Wann, J. P. (1996). Anticipating arrival: Is the tau margin a specious theory? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 22(4), 1031–1048.

DOI

57
Yu, Z., Kritikos, A., & Pegna, A. J. (2022). Enhanced early ERP responses to looming angry faces. Biological Psychology, 170, 108308.

DOI

58
Zhao, C. N., & Zeng, Q. (2022). The effect of electrical-stimulation-induced emotion on time perception: A time-reproduction task. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(24), 16984.

DOI

Options
Outlines

/