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Psychological Phenomena

Kappa Effect

Perception and Psychophysics Effects

The kappa effect is a perceptual illusion in which the amount of time judged to have passed between two sensory stimuli is distorted by the spatial or physical distance between them. When the distance between successive stimuli is large, observers tend to overestimate the time that elapsed between them, and when the distance is small, they tend to underestimate it, even when the true time interval is held constant. The effect has been demonstrated with visual, auditory and tactile stimuli, showing that the perception of elapsed time is not independent of spatial information.

Facts
Core Claim
A temporal perceptual illusion in which observers misjudge the elapsed time between sensory stimuli applied sequentially at different locations. 1
Classification
Type of Phenomenon
Perceptual Phenomenon 1
Sources
1. Kappa effect, Wikipedia
  • Lead paragraph
    The kappa effect or perceptual time dilation is a temporal perceptual illusion that can arise when observers judge the elapsed time between sensory stimuli applied sequentially at different locations.
  • lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
    The kappa effect is a perceptual illusion in which the amount of time judged to have passed between two sensory stimuli is distorted by the spatial or physical distance between them.
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