Relationship of affect, memory and number intuition with human time perception

Time perception is a fundamental process for all animals. We are all familiar with discrepancies in how duration is perceived. This paper explores the following questions: How does the brain perceive time, and what are the sources of these discrepancies? We conducted four studies to examine the effects of affect and arousal on subjective time perception. Employing the Scalar Expectancy Theory model, our final study investigated the role of working memory overload. Additionally, we explored the potential influence of information theory features associated with the stimuli across all studies. Using Bayesian data analysis, we demonstrated that the widely recognized effects of valence, arousal, and their interaction induced by visual stimuli might be artifacts. Notably, a significant effect of valence was observed only in one study, associated with working memory overload. We also highlighted the potential roles of luminance and entropy of visual stimuli, but only in direct duration estimations. The sole persistent effect was related to the objective duration of stimulus exposure. All studies utilized affective visual stimuli. Our findings underscore the necessity for further investigation into human time perception on a millisecond to second scale, particularly concerning stimulus- related factors. Additionally, our results emphasize the importance of methodological considerations in studying human time perception.