4.7 Article

Word Distance Affects Subjective Temporal Distance

Journal

FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 12, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.785303

Keywords

word distance; time perception; temporal bisection task; lexical kappa effect; internal clock

Funding

  1. China National Social Science Fund in Education (2018 general project: Neural Mechanisms of Multisensory Integration Dysfunction in Autism and Related Intervention under Multi-Modality Educational Perspective) [BBA180083]

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The study reveals a new phenomenon, the lexical kappa effect, where word distance affects the subjective perception of time intervals. When two words are closer in the lexicon, the temporal distance between them is perceived to be shorter.
The kappa effect is a well-reported phenomenon in which spatial distance between discrete stimuli affects the perception of temporal distance demarcated by the corresponding stimuli. Here, we report a new phenomenon that we propose to designate as the lexical kappa effect in which word distance, a non-magnitude relationship of discrete stimuli that exists in the lexical space of the mental lexicon, affects the perception of temporal distance. A temporal bisection task was used to assess the subjective perception of the time interval demarcated by two successively presented words. Word distance was manipulated by varying the semantic (Experiment 1) or phonological (Experiment 2) similarity between the two words. Results showed that the temporal distance between the two words was perceived to be shorter when the corresponding two words were lexically closer. We explain this effect within the internal clock framework by assuming faster detection of the word that terminated timing when it is preceded by a semantically or phonologically similar word.

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