Numbers Increasing to the Right Contract Perceived Time

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated that the association between numbers and space affects our various behaviors. However, whether this association influences temporal processing is unclear. To address this issue, we examined the effect of spatial order of presented numbers on time perception. Participants viewed five horizontally aligned digits ranging from 1 to 9. The numerical magnitude of the digits increased from left to right (Small-Large condition), decreased from left to right (Large-Small condition), or was randomly distributed (Random condition). Participants were asked to reproduce the duration of the presentation of the stimuli by pressing the spacebar. We found that the reproduced duration was shorter in the Small-Large condition than in the other two conditions. This temporal illusion might be explained by the “coding efficiency” model of time perception, that states that perceived stimulus duration is determined by the fluency of neural processing.