The Effect Of Pain On Temporal Bisection Task

Although we have known much about the temporal perception and the pain, it was even no known what the relationship between them. In actually this area of study is very important for both theories and our real life. According to the previous research, the pain is a preparing state of organism; It needs attention and will let the subject ignore other perceptions. This study was designed to explore how the pain would effect on the short duration judgement. We used the temporal bisection task to test whether the pain would effect the internal clock. In Experiment 1, having learned the standard durations (one is 400ms for short and the other is 1600ms for long), 17 participants were asked to compare the 7 comparative durations with the standard durations. It was found that there was a significant difference between the point of subjective equalities and between the Weber fracions in pain/no-pain conditions. In Experiment 2, 31 participants were asked to completed the temporal bisection task in four conditions. It was found that the point of subjective equality in the condition of pain/click is the longest. It meant the pain aroused the organism, leading to speed up the internal clock.The conclusions of study were as follows :(1) The pain increased the arousal level of organism, then speeded up the internal clock.(2) The pain distracted the attention from temporal information, so as to decrease the temporal sensitivity.