About the time-shrinking illusion in the tactile modality.

The aim of this study was to examine the occurrence of a so-called time-shrinking illusion in the tactile modality, while it had been tested so far mainly with auditory and visual stimuli. We examined whether the perception of an empty time interval marked by two brief tactile stimuli, S (240 ms), would be influenced by the presence of a preceding time interval, P (160, 240, or 320 ms). Results showed that S was underestimated when P was shorter than S. This underestimation appeared as a kind of perceptual assimilation between P and S, but S was not overestimated when P was longer. The underestimation was rather interpreted as a manifestation of the time-shrinking illusion.