The Effects of non-Substance Addiction Related Stimuli on Time Perception: Evidence from Gambling and Facebook/Internet Modified Paradigms

Research has identified that addiction related stimuli can cause attentional bias effects due to preferential treatment and allocation of cognitive resources. Furthermore, scalar expectancy theory (SET) and internal clock models (ICM) account for the role of arousal, attention, and memory in time keeping and time perception. This thesis investigated the effects of addiction related stimuli in time perception by attempting to discriminate between each of the three factors of arousal, attention, and memory. Initially this thesis replicated the Stroop interference caused by gambling stimuli and then expanded on into Facebook/Internet related stimuli (chapter 2). Findings from both of the above paradigms suggest that gambling related and Facebook/Internet related stimuli can cause attentional bias effects. In chapter 3 using a novel gambling modified temporal bisection task, this thesis investigated whether gambling related stimuli can cause temporal interference due to arousal or attentional mechanism, and whether negative or positive gambling related stimuli would further affect these effects. Findings indicated that Poker players underestimated durations for gambling related stimuli but not for neutral ones. No such findings were discovered for the control group. Furthermore, Poker players exhibited better temporal discriminability compared to the control group. In chapter 4, using a novel Facebook/Internet modified temporal bisection task, these findings were using Facebook/Internet related stimuli (salient) and neutral ones. Participants demonstrated underestimation of time for salient stimuli but not neutral ones. Furthermore, repetition and familiarity did not have an effect on time perception. Therefore, one could conclude that it is the emotional content of said salient stimuli that drove these effects and not familiarity. Finally, in chapter 5, this thesis investigated to what extent increasing memory load would affect the previously mentioned temporal perception distortions. Using a temporal bisection and N-back (or Sternberg) dual task, results suggested that salience effects on time perception disappear when memory load increases. Taken together, the above findings propose that addiction can provide greater insight and support to SET and ICM. On the other hand, time perception should also be used as a tool for detecting attentional and arousal effects in addictions in general, including both substance and non-substance addictions.