Media release

From: Springer Nature

Images may influence the passing of time *PRESS BRIEFING* 

The way images look determines not only how well they are remembered but also our perception of how much time has passed while observing them, according to a paper in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings may provide insights into how time is perceived and challenge the idea of a universal internal clock.

Time perception is a hallmark of human consciousness, but the brain’s ability to keep track and make sense of time is still poorly understood. Although some research has hypothesized the existence of an objective ‘internal clock’, other work has suggested that the nature of the stimuli that we encounter has a direct influence on our subjective perception of time.

Martin Wiener and colleagues conducted a series of experiments with a total of 170 individuals, during which the participants observed various images for different periods of time before being asked how long they thought they had viewed the images. The researchers combined these results with a neural network model and found that perceived time is affected by properties of the images, such as the size of the scene, the amount of clutter in it (e.g. a full pantry versus an empty warehouse) and how memorable the scene is.

More specifically, large scenes and memorable images (images that are typically more novel to the viewer and distinguishable from other images) appear to dilate time — that is, people believed they had viewed the image for longer than they had — whereas cluttered scenes contract it. The authors also show that time and memorability mutually influence one another, with duration estimation for more memorable images being more accurate, and images perceived to last longer were remembered better.

Wiener and colleagues suggest that these results may provide insights into the links between human vision, memory and time perception, and challenge the idea of the universal internal clock. However, they conclude, further research on other object features that influence visual processing, such as texture, is needed.

Please note that an online press briefing for the paper will take place UNDER STRICT EMBARGO on Thursday 18th April at 3 pm London time (BST) / 10 am US Eastern Time. 

Author Martin Wiener will discuss the research. This will be followed by a Q&A session. 

To attend this briefing you will need to pre-register by following the link here. Once you are registered, you will receive an email containing the details for the briefing. You will also be provided with the option to save the details of the briefing to your calendar.