Time changes with feeling of speed: an embodied perspective

The speed of moving stimuli can bias duration perception. Here, we investigated whether words describing different speeds influence subjective duration estimation in a temporal bisection task. Duration estimations of two different types of speed words (fast– vs. slow–speed words) were compared. We found that the time bisection point was significantly lower for fast-speed words than for slow-speed words, suggesting that the durations of fast-speed words were overestimated compared to the slow-speed words. In contrast, fast- and slow-speed words did not significantly differ in just noticeable differences and Weber fractions, indicating that the types of speed words did not influence the sensitivity of duration estimation. These results provide new evidence to support the theory of embodied cognition in the context of implicit meaning of a speed word.