Emotional modulation of attention affects time perception: Evidence from event-related potentials Maria Tamm a,b, ⁎, Andero Uusberg a,b , Jüri Allik a,b,c , Kairi Kreegipuu a,b a Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia b Doctoral School of Behavioural, Social and Health Sciences, University of Tartu, Estonia c Estonian Academy of Sciences, Estonia abstract article info Article history: Received 18 January 2013 Received in revised form 27 January 2014 Accepted 19 February 2014 Available online 18 March 2014 PsycINFO classification: 2300 Human Experimental Psychology 2360 Motivation & Emotion 2346 Attention 2530 Electrophysiology 2560 Psychophysiology Keywords: Time perception Interval production Affect ERP Emotional effects on human time perception are generally attributed to arousal speeding up or slowing down the internal clock. The aim of the present study is to investigate the less frequently considered role of attention as an alternative mediator of these effects with the help of event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants produced short intervals (0.9, 1.5, 2.7, and 3.3 s) while viewing high arousal images with pleasant and unpleasant contents in comparison to neutral images. Behavioral results revealed that durations were overproduced for the 0.9 s interval whereas, for 2.7 and 3.3 s intervals, underproduction was observed. The effect of affective valence was present for the shorter durations and decreased as the target intervals became longer. More specifically, the durations for un- pleasant images were less overproduced in the 0.9 s intervals, and for the 1.5 s trials, durations for unpleasant im- ages were slightly underproduced, compared to pleasant images, which were overproduced. The analysis of different ERP components suggests possible attention processes related to the timing of affective images in addi- tion to changes in pacemaker speed. Early Posterior Negativity (EPN) was larger for positive than for negative im- ages, indicating valence-specific differences in activation of early attention mechanisms. Within the early P1 and the Late Positive Potential (LPP) components, both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli exhibited equal affective modulation. Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) remained independent of both timing performance and affec- tive modulation. This pattern suggests that both pleasant and unpleasant stimuli enhanced arousal and captured attention, but the latter effect was more pronounced for pleasant stimuli. The valence-specificity of affective at- tention revealed by ERPs combined with behavioral timing results suggests that attention processes indeed con- tribute to emotion-induced temporal distortions, especially for longer target intervals. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Our sense of time can be altered by context, being particularly de- pendent on emotional states. The capacity to estimate time is assumed to rely on an internal clock-like mechanism (Buhusi & Meck, 2005; Gibbon, Church, & Meck, 1984; Treisman, 1963). This conceptual clock consists of a pacemaker transmitting pulses to an accumulator through a switch. Temporal decisions observed in laboratory timing tasks further require comparing the content of the accumulator with previously stored target durations in working memory. In principle, independent influences on any part of this clock-like mechanism – pacemaker, switch, accumulator, and memory – may generate distortions in subjec- tive time. Affective temporal distortions are mostly explained by the ef- fects of emotional arousal on an internal clock. However, theoretical arguments as well as empirical findings suggest that an interference between affective attention and a switch component of an internal clock-like mechanism may also be involved. The present study uses ERP components associated with emotional arousal, affective attention, and time perception to disentangle arousal and attention contributions to timing illusions. One phenomenon capable of influencing time is emotion (for re- views see Droit-Volet & Gil, 2009; Droit-Volet & Meck, 2007; Wittmann & Paulus, 2008). As a general rule, durations of emotional stimuli tend to be judged as longer than neutral stimuli. This effect has been observed with emotional faces (Droit-Volet, Brunot, & Niedenthal, 2004; Gil & Droit-Volet, 2011; Lee, Seelam, & O'Brien, 2011) and images (Angrilli, Cherubini, Pavese, & Manfredini, 1997), as well as with emotional sounds (Noulhiane, Mella, Samson, Ragot, & Pouthas, 2007). Moreover, highly arousing negative stimuli (i.e., angry faces, negative sounds) are judged as significantly longer than low arousal stimuli of negative or positive valence (e.g., fearful, sad, and happy faces; positive sounds) (Noulhiane et al., 2007; Tipples, 2008). However, emotional lengthen- ing of time is typically demonstrated for intervals shorter than 1 s and is rarely observed for durations longer than 2–3 s (e.g., Droit-Volet et al., 2004). Angrilli et al. (1997) even showed, in a temporal reproduc- tion task, that the relative overestimation of time for 2 s intervals shifted Acta Psychologica 149 (2014) 148–156 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia. Tel.: +372 7375902; fax: +372 7376152. E-mail address: Maria.Tamm@ut.ee (M. Tamm). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.02.008 0001-6918/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Acta Psychologica journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/ locate/actpsy