Emotional Context Distorts Both Time and Space in Children

Abstract

According to a generalized magnitude system, the representation of time, space and number relies on a common cognitive mechanism. However, in the context of negative emotional stimuli, temporal durations undergo a subjective overestimation, while numerosity judgments are underestimated. This finding clearly challenged the existence of a generalized magnitude system. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether angry faces biases both temporal and spatial estimates compared to neutral faces in children aged 5 - 6-year-old and 9 - 10-year-old. Children were to judge as short or long either the temporal interval or the distance separating two visual stimuli in a bisection task. Overall, the study suggests that negative emotion with high arousal (angry faces) leads to a distortion of both duration and distance. Such distortion is reported early in development, even before the maturation of time perception.