Daniel Bratzke

Previous studies have shown that congruency effects are often reduced when exogenous cues predict conflict between targets and distractors in conflict tasks. However, it is unclear how such effects are modulated by implicit temporal cues, as prior findings have been mixed. To address this, we conducted two large-scale experiments (N = 270), supplementing mean performance analyses with diffusion modeling (Diffusion Model for Conflict tasks). In Experiment 1, short and long foreperiods (FPs) were associated with high or low conflict probabilities in classical two-choice versions of the Eriksen flanker and Simon tasks. Mean reaction time analyses revealed that conflict effects were generally reduced with conflict-predicting FPs in both tasks. However, for the Eriksen flanker task, this modulation was larger when the long rather than the short FP predicted conflict, whereas for the Simon task, this modulation was similar or, if any, larger for the short than the long conflict-predicting FP. Diffusion Model for Conflict task analyses, which accounted for task-specific temporal dynamics of congruency effects, suggested that reductions in conflict effects were driven mainly by stronger distractor suppression rather than enhanced target amplification. In Experiment 2, conflict effects were also reduced with conflict-predicting FPs in a confound-minimized four-choice version of the Eriksen flanker task, though effects were smaller and reached significance only in the Diffusion Model for Conflict task analyses. Overall, these findings suggest that temporal cueing of conflict can enhance cognitive control in conflict tasks by strengthening distractor suppression, albeit in a manner that is partly specific to the conflict task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous studies have shown that emotional stimuli, such as pictures and sounds, can affect the perception of time. The present study investigated the effects of arousal and valence of standardized emotional pictures on two different subjective experiences of time: duration and the passage of time (POT). Emotional pictures were presented for 2, 4, or 6 s, and after each presentation participants provided either a duration or a POT judgment (in different experimental halves) as well as valence and arousal ratings on visual analog scales. In contrast to previous findings, the results showed no effects of arousal and valence on duration judgments; however, there were significant effects of arousal and valence on POT judgments, with both higher arousal and valence leading to an accelerated POT. The absence of arousal and valence effects on duration judgments in the present study could be related to the fact that pictures with extreme content were not included and thus the entire spectrum of possible arousal and valence values was not tested. Importantly, however, the different patterns of result for duration and POT judgments align with a growing body of research indicating that the perception of duration and the experience of the POT are not necessarily directly linked. Furthermore, the present study highlights the importance of collecting and analyzing current affective ratings even when using standardized emotional pictures, as the current ratings differed significantly from the norm values of the standardized picture sets.

This study investigated ensemble perception of temporal (duration) as well as spatial (size) information with simultaneously and sequentially presented ensembles of different set size. The results showed that summary statistics can be extracted from temporal ensembles as well as from size ensembles, irrespective of whether the ensembles are presented simultaneously or sequentially, demonstrating the domain generality of ensemble perception. Nevertheless, the results also indicate clear domain-specific differences between the two dimensions. For simultaneous ensembles, mean estimates increased with set size for duration ensembles and decreased with set size for size ensembles, suggesting a possible bias by dimension-specific features; in the case of duration by the interoffset intervals, and in the case of size by the overall ensemble size. For sequential ensembles, there was a recency effect for size stimuli but not for duration stimuli, suggesting that the information is integrated for the two dimensions differently. For example, participants might rely on an internal prior formed by memory mixing more strongly in the case of relatively noisy representations of temporal information.

The present study investigated the previous claim that auditory stimuli appear to last longer than visual ones, but that the modality has no influence on the experience of the passage of time (POT). Participants judged the duration, the POT, and the phenomenal quality of the two temporal experiences after hearing a tone or viewing a blue square with a duration between 200 ms and 5 s. The results showed modality effects on both duration and POT judgements, with longer duration and slower POT judgements for auditory than for visual stimuli. Judgements of phenomenal quality showed large interindividual differences, with most participants showing positive but some also negative relationships with target duration for both qualities. Importantly, duration and POT judgements were largely unaffected by these interindividual differences. The present results clearly contradict the previous assumption that the experienced POT is not influenced by sensory modality.

Previous studies have shown that the congruency sequence effect (CSE) is usually domain-specific, that is, no transfer across different conflict tasks is observed. The goal of the present study was to test whether the lack of a CSE transfer across the Simon and Eriksen flanker tasks can be explained by a confound of conflict type and the temporal dynamics of conflict processing (i.e., the temporal overlap of target and distractor processing). By presenting the target in the Eriksen task before the distractors, we were able to largely align the temporal overlap of distractor-to-target processing (as indexed by delta plots) in the Simon and Eriksen tasks. Nevertheless, across four experiments we found little, if any, evidence for a transfer of the CSE across tasks. Overall, the results demonstrate that cognitive control is highly specific to the type of conflict, even when controlling for the temporal dynamics of conflict processing.

The present study investigated space–time interference with static lines. In three preregistered online experiments, participants were presented with lines of different lengths and durations and asked to provide length or duration estimates after each trial on a visual analogue scale. Results showed bidirectional space–time interference in all experiments, with a slight asymmetry toward larger space-on-time than time-on-space interference when the target dimension was indicated only after stimulus presentation. Overall, the present findings add to a growing body of evidence demonstrating that space–time interference is more flexible than previously assumed.

Previous studies have shown interference between illusory size and perceived duration. The present study replicated this space-time interference in three classic visual-spatial illusions, the Ebbinghaus, the Müller-Lyer, and the Ponzo illusion. The results showed bidirectional interference between illusory size and duration for all three illusions. That is, subjectively larger stimuli were judged to be presented longer, and stimuli that were presented longer were judged to be larger. Thus, cross-dimensional interference between illusory size and duration appears to be a robust phenomenon and to generalize across a wide range of visual size illusions. This space-time interference most likely arises at the memory level and supports the theoretical notion of a common representational metric for space and time.

The relationship between duration perception and the feeling of time passing (passage of time) is not yet understood. In the present study, we assessed introspective reaction times (RT) and passage of time judgments in a speeded RT task. Task difficulty was manipulated in a numerical comparison task by numerical distance (distance from the number 45) and notation (digit vs. word). The results showed that both effects were reflected in introspective RTs, replicating previous results. Moreover, passage of time judgments showed a very similar pattern, with slower passage of time for more difficult comparisons. These results suggest that in the millisecond range judgments of duration and passage of time largely mirror each other when participants introspect about their own RT performance.