The Attentional Thief: Scrolling-Like Picture Streams Compress Subjective Time
- 1LMU Munich
Abstract
People lose track of time while scrolling, but real feeds confound novelty, reward, social signals, and self-paced control. We asked whether a scrolling-like picture stream, advanced at the viewer's own pace, compresses subjective time on its own. Twenty-three adults (10 female; age M = 27.0 years, SD = 4.1, range 22-36) completed three within-participant conditions with EEG and eye tracking. In Scrolling, they advanced through natural photographs by mouse click at their own pace, each picture preceded by a brief fixation interval. In Watching, they passively viewed new photographs with the picture and fixation durations of their own Scrolling block, permuted. In Baseline, a single photograph from the same pool stayed on screen for the matched duration. After each block, participants estimated its elapsed duration. Both sequential-picture conditions were judged far shorter than Baseline (Scrolling 48%, Watching 52%, Baseline 65% of clock time; Scrolling versus Baseline dz = -0.80), a compression carried by the fixation intervals between pictures, which observers barely counted. Scrolling was judged shorter still than Watching (dz = -0.77); the size of this increment varied with sequential context, in a pattern of assimilation toward the preceding estimate. EEG and eye tracking characterized self-paced viewing as a changed anticipatory state, an earlier visual response, and more active visual sampling. The results fit an attention-weighted readout of time: a picture stream and its uncounted intervals draw attention from the clock. Time processing during feed-like viewing is vulnerable to the structure of sequential viewing, independent of content or reward.
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BibTeX
@misc{qu2026attentional,
title = {{The Attentional Thief: Scrolling-Like Picture Streams Compress Subjective Time}},
author = {C. Qu and A. Zinchenko and S. Chen and Z. Shi},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.64898/2026.07.02.734699},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.02.734699v2},
note = {CC BY-NC},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - The Attentional Thief: Scrolling-Like Picture Streams Compress Subjective Time
AU - C. Qu
AU - A. Zinchenko
AU - S. Chen
AU - Z. Shi
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/02
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.07.02.734699
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.07.02.734699v2
AB - People lose track of time while scrolling, but real feeds confound novelty, reward, social signals, and self-paced control. We asked whether a scrolling-like picture stream, advanced at the viewer's own pace, compresses subjective time on its own. Twenty-three adults (10 female; age M = 27.0 years, SD = 4.1, range 22-36) completed three within-participant conditions with EEG and eye tracking. In Scrolling, they advanced through natural photographs by mouse click at their own pace, each picture preceded by a brief fixation interval. In Watching, they passively viewed new photographs with the picture and fixation durations of their own Scrolling block, permuted. In Baseline, a single photograph from the same pool stayed on screen for the matched duration. After each block, participants estimated its elapsed duration. Both sequential-picture conditions were judged far shorter than Baseline (Scrolling 48%, Watching 52%, Baseline 65% of clock time; Scrolling versus Baseline dz = -0.80), a compression carried by the fixation intervals between pictures, which observers barely counted. Scrolling was judged shorter still than Watching (dz = -0.77); the size of this increment varied with sequential context, in a pattern of assimilation toward the preceding estimate. EEG and eye tracking characterized self-paced viewing as a changed anticipatory state, an earlier visual response, and more active visual sampling. The results fit an attention-weighted readout of time: a picture stream and its uncounted intervals draw attention from the clock. Time processing during feed-like viewing is vulnerable to the structure of sequential viewing, independent of content or reward.
ER -