Examining visual complexity and its influence on perceived duration

We investigated whether visual complexity of novel\udabstract patterns affects perceived duration. Previous\udresearch has reported that complex visual stimuli led\udto an underestimation of durations. However, to\udclarify the nature of the time estimation process, it is\udnecessary to establish which component of image\udcomplexity, spatial or semantic, plays the critical role.\udHere we tested the impact of specific spatial\udproperties. We used unfamiliar and abstract patterns\udmade using black-and-white checkerboards in which\udthe difference between stimuli was exclusively in\udconfiguration. Visual complexity was quantified by the\udGIF index based on a compression algorithm, which\udscanned the pattern in both horizontal and vertical\uddirections. This metric correlated positively with\udsubjective complexity (Experiment 1A). In the second\udstudy, we increased variability in the stimuli by\udchanging the number of items across patterns while\udkeeping overall size constant. A high positive\udcorrelation was found between objective and\udsubjective complexity (r ¼ 0.95) (Experiment 2A). In\udExperiments 1B and 2B, observers estimated pattern\uddurations in seconds using a continuous scale. A\udmultilevel linear analysis found that perceived\udduration was not predicted by visual complexity for\udeither of the two sets of stimuli. These results provide\udnew constraints to theories of time perception,\udhypothesizing that complexity leads to an\udunderestimation of duration when it reduces attention\udto time