Reversed Effect of Eccentricity: Perceived Duration of Peripherally Presented Stimuli Depends on Time Span

Abstract

Abstract The perceived duration of stimuli presented in the visual periphery decreases with increasing eccentricity for brief durations. However, studies using different experimental methods or longer durations have reported inconsistent results. The present study aims to systematically explore the impact of stimulus eccentricity on perceived duration across various duration ranges. In three experiments employing the temporal bisection task, participants categorised the duration of stimuli presented at 3° or 9° of eccentricity as rather short or long, referred to two anchor durations previously learned. Stimulus durations varied between experiments and included short durations of 20–220 ms (Experiment 1), long durations of 400–1600 ms (Experiment 2), and intermediate durations of 160–660 ms (Experiment 3). For the short durations of Experiment 1, the results again replicated the decrease in perceived duration with increasing eccentricity. Interestingly, for the long durations, the effect was reversed, while subjective duration did not differ significantly between eccentricities for the intermediate durations. We discuss the findings with respect to prominent models of time perception, considering potential differences in attentional processing of short and long durations.