The Attentional Thief: Scrolling-Like Picture Streams Compress Subjective Time

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.