Document [original]

Acta Psychologica 249 (2024) 104460

Available online 9 August 2024

Age-related changes in time perception: Effects of immersive virtual reality

and spatial location of stimuli

Johanna Bogon

, Cindy Jagorska

, Isa Steinecker

, Martin Riemer

Media Informatics Group, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

Biological Psychology and Neuroergonomics, Technical University Berlin, 10623 Berlin, Germany

Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN), Berlin, Germany

Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences (CBBS), Magdeburg, Germany

ARTICLE INFO

Keywords:

Time perception

Space-time interference

Aging

Virtual reality

Mental time line

ABSTRACT

The perception of time is subject to various environmental influences and exhibits changes across the lifespan.

Studies on time perception have often been conducted using abstract stimuli and artificial scenarios, and recent

claims for more naturalistic paradigms and realistic stimuli pose the question as to whether immersive virtual

reality set-ups differently affect the timing abilities of older versus younger adults. Here, we tested the hy-

potheses that naturalistic 3D stimuli presented in immersive virtual reality (as opposed to abstract 2D stimuli

presented on a computer screen) and the spatial location of those stimuli (left vs. right) affect the perceived time

point of their occurrence.

Our results demonstrate that a naturalistic presentation of stimuli leads to a bias towards earlier time points in

younger, but not older participants. Furthermore, this bias was associated with lower scores of memory capacity.

Contrary to our hypothesis that right-sided stimuli are perceived as later than left-sided stimuli, no spatial in-

fluences on temporal processing were observed. These results show that older and younger adults are differently

affected by an increase in the realism and the immersiveness of experimental paradigms, and highlight the

importance of task design in studies on human time perception.

1. Introduction

The processing of temporal information is central for a successful

interaction with the environment, and many studies have reported age-

related changes in the perception of time (Block et al., 1998;Lustig &

Meck, 2001;Riemer et al., 2021). Reduced timing performance in

advanced age is associated with lower levels of cognitive functioning,

especially with respect to deficits in attention and working memory

(Maaßet al., 2019, 2022;Mioni et al., 2019, 2021;Perbal et al., 2002;

Turgeon et al., 2016). A problem for the assessment of changes in time

perception relates to the use of highly artificial paradigms, often

requiring judgments on the duration of abstract stimuli (e.g., visual

shapes) presented within an abstract 2D environment (e.g., computer

screen). This is unfortunate, because it is questionable to what extent the

changes in timing performance measured with these tasks can be

generalized to more naturalistic contexts (Boltz, 2005;Matthews &

Meck, 2014;Riemer et al., 2021;van Rijn, 2018). Therefore, some au-

thors proposed the use of more naturalistic stimuli in time perception

research (Riemer et al., 2018;Roseboom et al., 2019;Schlichting et al.,

2018;Thanopoulos et al., 2018;van Rijn, 2014). One example illus-

trating the difference between naturalistic and abstract stimuli is the

study by Thanopoulos et al. (2018), who found that intentional binding

(i.e., the illusory contraction of the interval between two events that are

considered cause and effect; Haggard et al., 2002) is more pronounced

when the second event is a realistic image and embedded within a

semantically meaningful sequence (e.g., the image of a hand hitting a

table surface, preceded by the image of a hand held above that table

surface) than when it is an abstract shape (e.g., a white circle). This

example demonstrates that a realistic embedding of stimuli affects the

processing of their temporal relation. Specifically for the assessment of

timing deficits in advanced age, naturalistic stimuli embedded in a

realistic scenario can be of advantage, because it is closer to the timing

difficulties encountered in everyday life (Maaßet al., 2022;Riemer

et al., 2021).

Related to the impact of environmental aspects on temporal pro-

cessing, it was often found that temporal judgments are influenced by

* Corresponding author at: Biological Psychology and Neuroergonomics, Technical University Berlin, Fasanenstr. 1, 10623 Berlin, Germany.

E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Riemer).

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Acta Psychologica

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/actpsy

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2024.104460

Received 30 April 2024; Received in revised form 7 August 2024; Accepted 8 August 2024

Acta Psychologica 249 (2024) 104460

task-irrelevant spatial characteristics of the environment. For example,

Xuan et al. (2007) reported that two-dimensional visual stimuli are

judged as temporally longer when they were presented in a larger size,

and, using more naturalistic stimuli, Riemer et al. (2018) could show

that the visual impression of spacious rooms (i.e., independent of actual

image size) led to longer duration estimates. The study of space-time

interference has been dominated by the investigation of associations

between temporal and spatial magnitude (e.g., short durations associated

with small size and long durations associated with large size), whereas

studies on the association between temporal and spatial position (e.g.,

early events associated with left side and late events associated with right

side) are scarce. Several studies report that the duration of stimuli pre-

sented in the left hemispace tends to be underestimated relative to

stimuli presented in the right hemispace (Anelli &Frassinetti, 2019;Di

Bono et al., 2012;Frassinetti et al., 2009;Vallesi et al., 2008;Vicario

et al., 2008), but it is unknown to date whether they are also perceived

as occurring earlier.

In the present study we investigated the effects of a naturalistic

stimulus presentation (abstract visual shapes on a 2D screen vs. realistic

stimuli presented in immersive VR) and of the spatial location of those

stimuli (left vs. right of the observer) on the relative timing of short

visual events. Furthermore, we asked whether these potential influence

factors (of presentation mode and spatial side) are different in a group of

older participants as compared to a group of younger participants, and

whether they are related to decreased memory capacities which often

coincides with advanced age. Based on a previous study (Riemer et al.,

2021), we expected that (i) the use of more realistic stimuli would alter

the relative timing of events, and in accordance with the concept of a

mental time line (i.e., the idea that time is represented from left to right

egocentric space; Bonato et al., 2012), we hypothesized that (ii) the

perceived moment of left-sided events is biased towards an earlier time

point, whereas right-sided events are perceived as occurring at a later

time point. Furthermore, as previous studies have suggested a link be-

tween mnemonic functioning and temporal processing (Maaßet al.,

2019;Mioni et al., 2024;Perbal et al., 2002), we hypothesized that (iii)

the above-mentioned changes in temporal processing correlate with

lower memory capacities.

2. Methods

2.1. Participants

Thirty-eight older and thirty-six younger adults participated in the

study. Due to misunderstanding of the task and extremely low perfor-

mance in a word list recall task (Helmstaedter &Durwen, 1990; cf.

Section 2.2), the data of two older participants were discarded after data

inspection. Thus, the final sample consisted of thirty-six older (28 fe-

males; mean age 67.2 years, ranging from 60 to 78) and thirty-six

younger adults (21 females; mean age 26.8 years, ranging from 22 to

35). As there are no previous studies providing a basis for a simulation-

based power analysis (Kumle et al., 2021), we aimed for a total of 72

participants, because this would result in sufficient power using a clas-

sical ANOVA approach (calculated with MorePower 6.0; Campbell &

Thompson, 2012). Due to a shortage of time, one participant from the

older group completed only the VR version of the task (cf. Section 2.3).

Participants were recruited from the local community and the

Technical University Berlin. They received monetary compensation or

course credit (their choice). The level of education differed between the

age groups: While the young group consisted almost entirely of uni-

versity students (94 %) who had at least 13 years of education, 36 % of

the older participants did not reach the official qualification for higher

education (i.e., <13 years of school). All participants gave written

informed consent to the experimental protocol, which was approved by

the ethics committee of the Technical University Berlin (protocol num-

ber: MR_01_20200323).

2.2. Assessment of cognitive functioning

Memory performance was assessed with the Verbaler Lern- und

Merkf¨

ahigkeitstest (VLMT; Helmstaedter &Durwen, 1990), a German

version of the Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (AVLT; Ivnik et al., 1990).

The VLMT requires learning of a list of 15 semantically unrelated words.

The total sum of correctly recalled words during five consecutive

learning trials was used as a performance measure.

2.3. Task versions and stimuli

We used a paradigm described in Riemer et al. (2022), here adapted

for visual stimuli, which requires the localization of an event in time and

is therefore suitable to test the perceived temporal occurrence of events

(for a recent application of the same paradigm, see Mioni et al., 2024).

Participants performed two different versions of this paradigm in

counterbalanced order. In the Desktop version, stimuli were presented on

a computer screen (59.5 ×33.5 cm

), and in the VR version, stimuli were

embedded within a virtual 3D environment presented via a head-

mounted display (HTC Vive Pro). Both task versions were pro-

grammed using Vizard (v.5.0, WorldViz). In the VR version, participants

sat on a chair in the tracking area of the Vive camera system. Except for

the instruction to remain seated and to maintain their general body

orientation, they were allowed to move, rotate their head and look

around. The virtual environment consisted of a large, dimly lit room

with two benches arranged in front of the participants, positioned on the

left and right side of the room (Fig. 1A). Each trial started with the

appearance of a lamp (0.5 m in height presented at a virtual distance of

5.3 m; vertical visual angle was about 5◦) on either the left or the right

bench. When the participants turned their head towards the lamp

(confirmed by motion tracking of the HMD), the room was illuminated

for a specific duration (in the following referred to as the reference

duration). Approximately at the temporal midpoint of this reference

duration, the lamp produced a very brief flash (100 ms). After the room

was dimmed out again (indicating the end of the reference duration),

participants had to indicate whether the brief flashing of the lamp

occurred in the first or in the second half of the reference duration (two-

alternative forced-choice). Responses were given with one specific

finger of the right hand,

using the ‘up’and ‘down’keys of a standard

German keyboard that was held by the participants on their lap (indi-

cating that the flash was in the first or the second half, respectively). To

ensure that the complete reference duration was attended to, the length

of the reference duration was varied between trials. Three different

reference durations were used (3.05, 3.81, and 4.76 s).

The temporal position of the flash within the reference duration was

changed according to an adaptive staircase procedure (1-up-1-down),

but independently for ‘left’and ‘right’trials. The staircase started at 50

% (i.e., the objective midpoint of the reference duration), and the step

size was fixed at 2 % of the current reference duration. For example, if a

flash of the left lamp was judged as having occurred during the first half

of the reference duration, then the temporal position of the flash in the

next ‘left’trial was shifted towards the end of the reference duration.

The task was performed in four separate blocks, between which the

participants were allowed to take off the head-mounted display and

make a short pause. Each block consisted of 18 ‘left’and 18 ‘right’trials

(presented in a randomized order), resulting in a total of 144 trials per

participant. As the adaptive staircase procedure resulted in a maximal

level of perceived difficulty, 16 ‘easy’trials were added (one after every

ninth trial) for motivational purposes. In those easy trials, the temporal

position was set to either 25 % or 75 % of the reference duration.

Additionally, fake feedback was presented after each block (randomly

Most participants used the index finger, but some preferred the middle

finger. The only constraint was that they had to use the same finger to operate

both keys, throughout the whole experiment.

J. Bogon et al.

Acta Psychologica 249 (2024) 104460

chosen between 75 % and 85 % of “correct responses”). Participants

were asked to refrain from chronometric counting.

In the Desktop version (Fig. 1B), two rectangular empty frames (41

×18 mm

; vertical visual angle was about 4◦) were presented on a

computer screen, one at the left and one at the right screen side. In each

trial, one of these frames was filled black, indicating the side that should

be attended. The reference duration was indicated by a change of the

screen background color from dark grey to a light grey (onset) and back

to dark grey (offset). Approximately at the temporal midpoint of this

interval, the filled black frame flashed to white for 40 ms. Participants

had to judge whether the flash occurred in the first or in the second half

of the reference duration. Apart from the presentation mode, the stim-

ulus material and the placement of the keyboard on the table instead of

the participants' lap, the procedure was identical to the VR version.

2.4. Statistical analysis

On the basis of the temporal judgments, four psychometric functions

per subject were calculated, describing the perceived temporal occur-

rence of left- and right-sided stimuli in the Desktop and the VR version of

the task. Responses later than 15 s after the offset of the reference

duration were not used for the calculation of logistic functions (0.4 % of

all trials). Fitted logistic functions were calculated using R package

quickpsy (Linares &L´

opez-Moliner, 2016) and represent the probability

of the response ‘target was in the second half’as a function of the

relative position of the target stimulus within the reference duration.

The first function parameter (50 % threshold) was constrained to values

between 0 and 1, and the second function parameter (slope) to values

between 0 and 100. Guess and lapse rates were allowed to vary between

0 and 0.1. Bias and precision of temporal judgments were quantified by

the point of subjective equality (PSE), defined as the target position at

which the target was perceived in the second half in 50 % of trials, and

the difference limen (DL), defined as half the difference between the

target position at which the target was perceived in the second half in 25

% and 75 % of trials (i.e., the flatter the logistic function, the larger the

DL; Ulrich &Vorberg, 2009). Functions with a DL above 0.8 (indicating

poor general performance) or an extreme PSE (outside the range be-

tween 0.2 and 0.8) were defined as outliers and discarded from further

analysis (3.5 %).

For the analysis of reaction times, outliers were defined according to

the Median Absolute Deviation procedure (MAD; Leys et al., 2013) with

a cutoff value of 10. In addition, responses earlier than 100 ms were

discarded. In total, 1.7 % of reaction time data were discarded as

outliers.

Data were analysed in R (R Core Team, 2016), by fitting linear mixed

effects models (2 ×2×2 factorial design) using packages lme4 (Bates

et al., 2015) and lmerTest (Kuznetsova et al., 2017), including age group

as between-subjects factor (old vs. young), and task version (VR vs.

Desktop) and stimulus side (left vs. right) as within-subjects factors. The

model included all main effects as well as the interaction effects with age

group. Subjects were included as random factor.

To test our hypothesis that individual differences in memory capacity

have an impact on the relative timing of events (in addition to age group),

alternative models were fitted, accounting for individual memory per-

formance scores (number of recalled words in the VLMT; cf. Section 2.2),

which were included as centered, continuous variable. These alternative

models were tested against the corresponding base models using func-

tion KRmodcomp of R package pbkrtest (Halekoh &Højsgaard, 2014).

A complete analysis script and the raw data can be found at OSF (htt

ps://osf.io/bkv7f/).

3. Results

3.1. Bias of temporal judgments

Results for the bias of temporal judgments are depicted in Fig. 2A.

Fig. 1. Schematic depiction of trials in the (A) immersive VR version and the (B) Desktop version of the task.

J. Bogon et al.

Acta Psychologica 249 (2024) 104460

The alternative model including individual differences in working

memory capacity was preferred over the base model (F

3/178

=3.3, p=

.023). It revealed a significant effect of memory capacity (β= − 0.003, SE

=0.001, t

69.2

= − 3.1, p=.003), whereas the effect of age group was not

significant (β=0.010, SE =0.008, t

69.3

=1.3, p=.21). Additional

correlation analyses (Fig. 3A) confirmed that lower memory capacity

scores were associated with a bias of the PSE towards larger values for

the older participants (r= − 0.48, t

= − 3.2, p=.001), but not for the

younger participants (r= − 0.18, t

= − 1.1, p=.15).

There was also a significant effect of task version, indicating a relative

bias of the PSE towards larger values in the VR version (β= − 0.008, SE

=0.003, t

200.3

= − 2.9, p=.005) and a significant interaction between

task version and age group, indicating that the effect of task version was

larger for the younger participants (β= − 0.008, SE =0.003, t

199.1

−2.5, p=.012). There was no interaction between task version and

memory capacity (|β|<0.001, SE <0.001, t

200.4

= − 0.5, p>.5).

With respect to the influence of spatial side, we did not find an effect

of stimulus side (β=0.001, SE =0.003, t

199.1

=0.4, p >.5) and no in-

teractions with age group (β= − 0.001, SE =0.003, t

198.6

= − 0.4, p >.5)

or memory capacity (|β|<0.001, SE <0.001, |t

199.1

|<0.1, p >.5).

3.2. Precision of temporal judgments

Data on the difference limen (DL) are presented in Fig. 2B. The

alternative model including individual differences in memory capacity

was not preferred over the base model (F

3/178

=1.9, p=.13). With

respect to the precision of temporal judgments, individual memory ca-

pacity had no additional explanatory value beyond the factor age group.

The base model revealed a significant effect of age group, indicating

lower precision for older participants (β= − 0.016, SE =0.007, t

63.0

−2.2, p=.030).

The main effects of task version (β=0.003, SE =0.004, t

197.3

=0.7, p

=.47) and stimulus side (β=0.004, SE =0.004, t

194.9

=0.9, p=.38)

were not significant, and neither were the respective interaction effects

with age group (task version ×age group: |β|<0.001, SE =0.004, t

197.3

−0.1, p >.5; stimulus side ×age group:β= − 0.002, SE =0.004, t

194.9

−0.4, p >.5).

Correlation analyses showed that lower memory capacity scores

were associated with lower precision (r= − 0.34, t

= − 3.0, p=.002),

although in the base model this effect is fully accounted for by the dif-

ferences between age groups. Separate analysis for both groups (Fig. 3B)

revealed a significant correlation only for the older participants (r=

−0.41, t

= − 2.6, p=.006), but not for the younger ones (r= − 0.05,

= − 0.3, p =.38).

3.3. Reaction times

Reaction times are presented in Fig. 2C. Again, the alternative model

including individual differences in memory capacity was not preferred

over the base model (F

3/182

=0.4, p >.5). The base model revealed a

significant effect only for task version, indicating that the participants

responded faster in the VR version as compared to the Desktop version

(β=0.100, SE =0.017, t

209.9

=6.0, p <.001). None of the other effects

reached a statistically significant level (all ps >0.5).

4. Discussion

Event timing is an essential ability for a successful interaction with

our environment. In the present study we tested whether event timing is

influenced by a naturalistic presentation of the to-be-timed stimuli and

by the spatial side at which they occur (i.e., left or right of the observer),

and whether the impact of these influence factors increases with age. For

this purpose, two groups of young (<35 years) and old (>60 years)

healthy participants were tested with a paradigm requiring a decision as

to whether a short visual event occurred in the first or the second half of

a reference duration.

With respect to the effects of a naturalistic presentation, our results

show that target events were perceived as earlier (relative to the onset

and offset of a reference duration) when the stimuli were embedded

within a naturalistic scene presented in immersive VR via a head-

mounted display. This effect, however, was restricted to the group of

younger participants, while older participants did not show a perceptual

bias towards an earlier point in time for the more naturalistic task

version. This pattern mirrors a finding from a previous study (Riemer

et al., 2021). In this study, younger and older participants were asked for

prospective and retrospective judgments on the temporal duration of

several events, which were presented either as isolated object images or

were embedded within a naturalistic context (a video of an urban scene).

An advantage for the naturalistic context condition was attested only for

the young participants, while a similar advantage was absent for the

older participant group. Although it is unclear to what extent a bias

towards earlier time points in an event timing task corresponds to a

higher precision regarding duration judgments, these studies demon-

strate that older adults and younger adults are differently affected by an

increase in the realism and the immersiveness of task design. This

observation is particularly relevant in light of mounting claims for more

naturalistic paradigms and realistic stimuli in time perception research,

in order to increase the ecological validity and the generalisability of

results (Boltz, 2005;Matthews &Meck, 2014;Schlichting et al., 2018;

Tobin et al., 2010;van Rijn, 2018). Especially with respect to the

Fig. 2. Results for (A) the bias towards earlier/later time points, quantified by

the point of subjective equality (PSE), (B) the precision of temporal judgments,

quantified by the difference limen (DL) and (C) reaction times. Error bars

represent the standard error across subjects.

J. Bogon et al.

Acta Psychologica 249 (2024) 104460

Fig. 3. Correlations between (A) the point of subjective equality (PSE) and memory capacity assessed with the VLMT (Helmstaedter &Durwen, 1990), and between

(B) the difference limen (DL) and memory capacity. (C) Group comparison for memory capacity revealed a significant difference, with younger adults performing

better than older adults (t

69.9

=3.7, p<.001, d=0.73, 95 % CI[0.36, 1.06]). Small points represent individual participants, large points represent the group means.

J. Bogon et al.

Acta Psychologica 249 (2024) 104460

assessment of time perception deficits in advanced age (Block et al.,

1998;Lustig, 2003;Mioni et al., 2024), previous studies have suggested

that more naturalistic paradigms are better in capturing the various

timing issues that older adults might encounter in their everyday lives

(L¨

ockenhoff &Rutt, 2015;Maaßet al., 2022). Increasingly sophisticated

virtual reality techniques provide a valid tool for presenting naturalistic

stimuli in fully immersive settings, while retaining the advantage of

experimental control (Bogon et al., 2023;Landeck et al., 2023).

Another important finding of our study is that the tendency to

perceive the target event at an earlier point in time was negatively

correlated with a measure of memory capacity (Fig. 3A). The lower the

memory capacity, the larger was the PSE, indicating a perceptual bias of

the event occurrence towards earlier time points. This effect was pri-

marily based on the data of older participants, probably due to a larger

variability of memory capacity in this group. Effects of age and reduced

cognitive capacities have often been described in terms of a reduced

precision of judgments (Mioni et al., 2019;Turgeon et al., 2016), but

also timing accuracy can be affected (Balcı et al., 2009;Block et al.,

1998). For example, it has been shown that reduced working memory

capacities were associated with an over-reproduction of temporal in-

tervals (Baudouin et al., 2006). The results of the present study therefore

suggest that differences in cognitive abilities such as memory capacity

are reflected in accuracy biases, proposing a potential behavioral marker

for age-related cognitive decline (El Haj &Kapogiannis, 2016;Mioni

et al., 2021;Xu &Church, 2017).

The effect of memory capacity on the bias towards earlier time

points, however, was not significantly different for both task versions.

Hence, at the group level, the effect of naturalistic presentation was

different for older versus younger participants, but it was not sensitive

enough to differentiate between different degrees of memory capacity at

the level of individuals. A potential reason for this (and a limitation of

the present study) consists in the fact that the implemented VR task

version, although using more naturalistic stimuli and presentation in an

immersive 3D environment, still bears some crucial differences to a real-

life situation. It remains an open question for future research whether

the realization of a realistic paradigm per se would be sensitive enough

to differentiate between different degrees of memory capacity even at

the individual level.

With respect to the influence of the spatial location of stimuli, that is,

whether the to-be-timed stimuli appeared to the left or to the right of the

observer, the present study did not reveal any significant results. Effects

of spatial factors on time perception have been frequently reported in

young adults (Bonato et al., 2012;Cai et al., 2018;Cona et al., 2021;

Riemer et al., 2014, 2018;Teghil et al., 2019;Vicario et al., 2008;Xuan

et al., 2007), but the question as to whether these interference effects

between time and space increase or decrease with age cannot be

answered on the basis of the present study. The reason for this is that the

expected interference effects could not be confirmed within the group of

younger participants. In neither of the groups, we did find evidence for

an effect of stimulus side on a perceptual bias towards earlier or later

time points.

The absence of this effect might be explained by the specific design of

the paradigm implemented here. To indicate whether the event occurred

during the first or the second half of the reference duration, participants

used the ‘up’and ‘down’keys of the keyboard, respectively. These keys

were chosen due to their vertical spatial arrangement, which should

prevent the occurrence of Simon effects (Simon &Wolf, 1963), that is,

that the spatial side of the stimuli facilitate responses with the spatially

congruent key (Mioni et al., 2014). However, stimulus-response

compatibility effects have also been reported along orthogonal spatial

dimensions (Cho &Proctor, 2003), and therefore a potential effect of

stimulus side might have been obscured in our design by the imple-

mentation of spatial response codes (Ehrenstein et al., 1989;Michaels &

Schilder, 1991). In future studies, this could be tested by the imple-

mentation of a non-spatial response mode (e.g., verbal responses).

Of course, another possibility is that an interference effect of the

spatial location (left or right of the observer) on the perceived temporal

occurrence of an event simply does not exist. This possibility stands in

spite of many studies confirming interference effects between time and

space, because by far most of these studies focused on the association

between spatial side and the duration of events, in the sense that left-

sided stimuli appear shorter and right-sided stimuli longer (e.g., Anelli

&Frassinetti, 2019;Di Bono et al., 2012;Frassinetti et al., 2009;Vicario

et al., 2008). In contrast, the present study tested a potential association

between spatial side and the temporal occurrence of events, in the sense

that left-sided stimuli appear earlier and right-sided stimuli later in time.

Studies on this issue are scarce. Evidence for an association between left-

early and right-late was reported in terms of congruency effects (Riemer

et al., 2016). In their study, numerical digits were presented either at the

left or the right screen side and either early or late within a predefined

time window. The results showed that parity judgments towards the

digits could be performed faster when the stimuli appeared left and early

(or right and late), whereas stimuli with the respective incongruent

pairing required longer processing times. The same study, however, did

not reveal evidence for a spatial-temporal association of response codes

(i.e., faster reactions towards early vs. late stimuli depending on the

lateral side of the correct response key; but see Ishihara et al., 2008).

5. Conclusions

This study was conducted to investigate whether the perceived

temporal occurrence of an event is influenced by a naturalistic presen-

tation of the to-be-timed stimuli and by the spatial side at which they

occur, and whether these influence factors differ between age groups.

We conclude that, for younger participants, a naturalistic presentation in

immersive virtual reality biases the timing of an event towards earlier

time points, whereas this effect is absent in older participants. These

results demonstrate the importance of the design of experimental par-

adigms that are used to assess age-related changes in time perception.

The spatial location at which the to-be-timed stimuli appeared had

no effect on the results, neither for the younger nor for the older par-

ticipants. Future research is needed to elucidate whether the absence of

this effect is specific to our task design or whether the presumed mental

association between left-early and right-late stimuli does not exist (in

contrast to the established association between left-short and right-long

stimuli; Anelli &Frassinetti, 2019).

Declaration of ethical approval

The study was approved by the local ethical committee and con-

ducted according to the ethical standards laid down in the 6th Revision

of the Declaration of Helsinki (Version Seoul 2008).

Funding

This study was supported by a grant of the Deutsche For-

schungsgemeinschaft (DFG, project number: 452179073). The funding

source had no direct involvement in the study.

Availability of data and materials

The data and materials from the present experiment are publicly

available at the Open Science Framework website: https://osf.io/bkv7f/

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Johanna Bogon: Writing –review &editing, Writing –original

draft, Visualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation.

Cindy Jagorska: Writing –review &editing, Formal analysis, Data

curation. Isa Steinecker: Writing –review &editing, Data curation.

Martin Riemer: Writing –review &editing, Writing –original draft,

Supervision, Project administration, Methodology, Funding acquisition,

J. Bogon et al.

Acta Psychologica 249 (2024) 104460

Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability

We have shared a link to a repository with raw data and analysis

scripts.

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