Flickering task–irrelevant distractors induce dilation of target duration depending upon cortical distance

Flickering stimuli are perceived to be longer than stable stimuli. This so-called “flicker-induced time dilation” has been investigated in a number of studies, but the factors critical for this effect remain unclear. We explored the spatial distribution of the flicker effect and examined how the flickering task-irrelevant distractors spatially distant from the target induce time dilation. In two experiments, we demonstrated that flickering distractors dilated the perceived duration of the target stimulus even though the target stimulus itself was stable. In addition, when the distractor duration was much longer than the target duration, a flickering distractor located ipsilateral to the target caused greater time dilation than did a contralateral distractor. Thus the amount of dilation depended on the distance between the cortical areas responsible for the stimulus locations. These findings are consistent with the recent study reporting that modulation of neural oscillators encoding the interval duration could explain flicker-induced time dilation.