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Dissociable Effects of Emotional Stimuli on Perception and Decision-Making for Time

Previous research has demonstrated that negative emotional faces dilate time perception, however, the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are not fully understood. Previous attempts focus on the pacemaker-accumulator model of time perception, which includes a clock, memory, and decision-making stage, wherein emotion affects one of these stages; possibly by increasing pacemaker rate via arousal, increasing accumulation rate via attention, or by biasing decision-making. To further investigate the stage(s) that emotion is affecting time perception we conducted a visual temporal bisection task with sub-second intervals while recording 64-channel electroencephalogram (EEG). To separate the influence of face and timing responses the temporal stimulus was preceded and followed by a face stimulus displaying a neutral or negative expression creating three trial-types: Neg→Neut, Neut→Neg, or Neut→Neut. The data revealed a leftward shift in bisection point (BP) in Neg→Neut and Neut→Neg suggesting an overestimation of time. Neurally, we found the face-responsive N170 component was larger for negative faces and the N1 and contingent negative variation (CNV) were larger when preceded by a negative face. We also found an interaction effect between condition and response for the late positive component of timing (LPCt) and a significant difference between response (short/long) in the neutral condition. We conclude that a preceding negative face affects the clock stage leading to more pulses being accumulated, either through attention or arousal, as indexed by a larger N1, CNV, and N170; whereas viewing the negative face second biased decision-making leading to “short” responses being less likely, as evidenced by the LPCt.