Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago

Chronostasis

Chronostasis, commonly known as the stopped clock illusion, is a temporal perceptual illusion in which the first visual stimulus encountered after a rapid eye movement, or saccade, subjectively appears to last longer than its actual duration, typically by around 100-200 milliseconds.^[1]^[2] This effect creates the impression that time briefly "freezes" or dilates at the onset of the new fixation, as experienced when glancing at a ticking clock and perceiving the second hand to pause.^[1] The illusion was first systematically studied in the late 1990s, building on anecdotal reports of distorted time perception during eye shifts, with foundational experiments by Yarrow and colleagues in 2001 demonstrating that the perceived lengthening increases linearly with saccade duration—for instance, a 55° saccade extends perceived time more than a 22° one, by up to 69 milliseconds.^[3] Subsequent research confirmed the effect's consistency across various saccade types, including voluntary pro-saccades, anti-saccades, and even involuntary express saccades, with overestimations ranging from 90 to 192 milliseconds regardless of reaction time differences up to 61 milliseconds.^[2] The prevailing explanation, termed the antedating hypothesis, posits that the brain attributes the post-saccadic stimulus onset to a moment approximately 50 milliseconds before the saccade begins, effectively backdating the event to maintain perceptual continuity during the period of blurred vision and suppressed awareness inherent to eye movements.^[1]^[3] This mechanism likely involves a subcortical efference copy signal from structures like the superior colliculus, which remaps visual timing without reliance on higher-level voluntary intent, as the illusion persists even in passive or reflexive eye movements.^[2] Chronostasis extends beyond vision to other modalities, such as tactile sensations during manual actions, where perceived onset precedes physical contact, suggesting a broader role in integrating sensory events with motor commands.^[4] Key experiments have ruled out alternative accounts, like altered internal clock rates, by showing fixed effect sizes across stimulus durations from 100 to 1,333 milliseconds and no dependence on spatial attention shifts alone.^[3] More recent studies indicate modulations by concurrent auditory cues, which can linearly reduce the illusion's magnitude when synchronized with the visual stimulus.^[5] Overall, chronostasis highlights the brain's active compensation for oculomotor disruptions, ensuring a stable subjective timeline despite frequent eye movements occurring 3-4 times per second in everyday viewing.^[1]

Definition and Overview

Core Phenomenon

Chronostasis is a perceptual illusion in which the duration of a stimulus appears subjectively elongated immediately following a rapid movement, such as a saccadic eye movement or a manual action.^[6] This temporal overestimation creates the impression that the stimulus persists longer than it actually does, effectively extending the perceived onset of the stimulus backward in time to compensate for the perceptual gap during the movement.^[7] Saccades, the quick shifts of gaze between fixation points, serve as a common trigger for this effect.^[2] A primary example of chronostasis occurs when an observer looks away from a clock and then back at it just as the second hand is about to tick; the first observed position of the hand appears frozen in place, seeming to last up to 500 milliseconds longer than its actual brief duration.^[6] In experimental settings, participants making a saccade to a visual target, such as a rotating clock hand or a flashing stimulus, report perceiving the target's initial presentation as extended, filling in the temporal void created by the eye movement.^[8] The illusion's magnitude typically ranges from 100 to 200 milliseconds of overestimation, though it can vary with the duration and amplitude of the preceding movement, and it manifests reliably after such movements but not during periods of static fixation.^[2] Unlike the stopped-motion effect, where apparent motion halts due to discrete frame sampling in visual displays, chronostasis specifically entails a temporal dilation linked to the onset of voluntary or reflexive actions, preserving perceptual continuity across the movement.^[7]

Historical Background

The stopped clock illusion, in which the second hand of an analog clock appears to pause momentarily upon shifting one's gaze to it, has long been recognized as a common perceptual experience, likely dating back centuries to the widespread use of mechanical timepieces.^[9] Scientific investigation of this phenomenon emerged in the late 1990s, transitioning from informal observations to systematic experimentation. In 1997, Peter Brown and John C. Rothwell reported initial findings at the Society for Neuroscience, observing that the illusion occurs most reliably when a rapid eye movement (saccade) directs fixation to a clock face immediately after the second hand advances, suggesting a link to oculomotor processes. Their work highlighted how the brain might compensate for the brief perceptual gap during saccades, though quantitative measures were not yet established.^[10] The term "chronostasis" was introduced in 2001 by Yarrow, Haggard, Brown, and Rothwell to encapsulate the illusory temporal extension or stasis following such eye movements, distinguishing it from broader time perception distortions.^[6] By the early 2000s, researchers had developed controlled laboratory paradigms to study the effect more rigorously. In 2001, Kielan Yarrow, Patrick Haggard, and colleagues quantified the illusion using tasks involving self-paced saccades to digital chronoscopes, demonstrating that post-saccadic stimuli are perceived as lasting approximately 100 milliseconds longer than actual, effectively backfilling the suppressed visual input during the eye shift to preserve perceptual continuity.^[6] These pre-2000s efforts shifted focus from anecdotal accounts to empirical methods, employing fixation crosses, auditory cues for saccade timing, and subjective duration judgments, while early links to attentional shifts were explored in related oculomotor studies.

Physiological and Neural Basis

Role of Eye Movements

Saccades are rapid, ballistic eye movements that abruptly shift the point of fixation from one location to another in the visual field, enabling efficient scanning of the environment. These movements typically exhibit peak velocities ranging from 200 to 700 degrees per second, depending on their amplitude, and can be classified as voluntary (endogenous, such as self-paced shifts in gaze) or reflexive (exogenous, triggered by sudden peripheral stimuli).^[11]^[12] The chronostasis illusion is specifically triggered by the execution of a saccade, with the perceptual time extension commencing at the moment the eyes land on the target stimulus following the movement. This temporal distortion is closely tied to the period of visual suppression during the saccade itself, during which retinal blur occurs for approximately 50-100 milliseconds due to the high-speed eye rotation, effectively masking the transient disruption in visual input.^[13]^[14] Experimental evidence from fixation tasks underscores the essential role of eye movements, as chronostasis does not manifest when observers maintain a steady gaze on the stimulus without performing a saccade. In counter-movement paradigms, where the stimulus is passively shifted toward the fixation point without requiring active eye displacement, the illusion is similarly absent, confirming that the effect depends on the motor act of the saccade rather than mere stimulus change.^[2]^[13] The chronostasis effect exhibits a distinct temporal window, primarily observed for stimuli presented up to about 50 milliseconds after saccade offset, with the extension decaying rapidly thereafter, which aligns with the brain's need to maintain perceptual continuity across gaze shifts.^[15]^[16]

Perceptual and Neural Mechanisms

Chronostasis arises primarily through saccadic suppression, a neural process in which the brain actively inhibits visual processing during rapid eye movements to avoid perceiving motion blur from the shifting retinal image. This suppression begins approximately 50-100 ms before saccade onset and persists for about 100-200 ms afterward, effectively creating a perceptual gap that the brain fills by reconstructing continuity.^[17]^[18] Key neural pathways involved in this process include the superior colliculus, which generates efferent signals for eye movements and contributes to triggering chronostasis via low-level subcortical mechanisms. These signals interact with higher cortical areas, such as the frontal eye fields and parietal cortex (specifically the lateral intraparietal area), to correlate motor commands with perceptual remapping and maintain spatial stability across saccades.^[2] Perceptual reconstruction in chronostasis involves backdating the perceived onset of a post-saccadic stimulus to the start of the eye movement, an illusory extension of approximately 90-200 milliseconds facilitated by corollary discharge signals that predict sensory consequences of actions. This mechanism compensates for suppressed input by attributing the stimulus's appearance to a time before the saccade, preserving the subjective continuity of events despite the neural delay.^[19]^[1]^[2]

Variants Across Sensory and Motor Domains

Visual Chronostasis

Visual chronostasis manifests as a perceptual illusion in which the duration of a visual stimulus presented immediately after a saccadic eye movement is subjectively overestimated, creating the impression that time has momentarily paused. In the classic experimental paradigm, participants fixate on a peripheral cue, which triggers a saccade toward a central clock displaying a moving second hand. Upon landing the eyes on the clock, the second hand appears to remain stationary for an extended period before resuming its motion, as if the observer's gaze has "stopped" the clock. This effect, first systematically demonstrated in laboratory settings, highlights how the brain compensates for the brief disruption in visual input during the saccade by extending the perceived onset of the post-saccadic stimulus backward in time.^[20] The illusion applies particularly to dynamic visual stimuli, such as the sweeping needle of an analog clock or a moving cursor on a display, where the perceived pause is more pronounced than for static images. For instance, when saccading to a ticking clock face, observers report the second hand as having advanced less than it actually has during the interval from saccade onset to fixation, with the magnitude of the distortion increasing for stimuli involving continuous motion, as the brain attributes the movement's continuity across the saccadic gap. This stimulus-specific enhancement underscores the role of perceived motion in amplifying the temporal extension, though the effect diminishes for non-moving or less salient elements.^[20]^[15] The visual chronostasis illusion is most robust when the post-saccadic stimulus lands in the fovea, the high-acuity central region of the retina, allowing for detailed processing that facilitates the perceptual filling-in. In contrast, stimuli perceived in the peripheral visual field after the saccade exhibit a reduced effect, likely due to lower spatial resolution and attentional prioritization of foveal input, resulting in weaker temporal binding. Saccades serve as the primary trigger for this visual variant, linking it to oculomotor processes that maintain perceptual continuity. Recent studies (as of 2025) further show that while the initial post-saccadic stimulus is overestimated, subsequent events along the saccade trajectory may be perceptually compressed, revealing opposing temporal distortions.^[15]^[3]^[21] Measurement of visual chronostasis typically relies on subjective reports of perceived duration or temporal order judgments, where participants compare the estimated time of the post-saccadic stimulus against a reference interval. In standard clock-hand tasks, observers indicate the hand's position at fixation onset, revealing an average overestimation of approximately 100-200 ms, equivalent to the second hand appearing frozen for that duration despite actual advancement. These methods, often employing psychophysical techniques like method of adjustment, provide quantitative insights into the illusion's scale while controlling for veridical timing cues.^[20]^[2]

Auditory and Multisensory Chronostasis

Auditory chronostasis refers to the perceptual overestimation of duration for auditory stimuli, analogous to the visual variant, but elicited through shifts in auditory attention rather than eye movements. In experiments where participants judged the length of a silent gap between two tones presented dichotically (one to each ear), switching attention from one ear to the other resulted in an overestimation of the gap duration by approximately 130 ms, with subjective estimates of a 1000 ms interval reduced to about 825 ms when attention shifted.^[22] This effect, though comparable in magnitude to visual chronostasis (typically 100-200 ms following saccades), is weaker and independent of overt motor actions like saccades, suggesting a shared multimodal mechanism for temporal perception that operates across sensory domains.^[22]^[2] Multisensory chronostasis arises when auditory and visual cues interact during or after saccades, modulating the illusion through cross-modal integration. A synchronous auditory stimulus presented at the onset of a post-saccadic visual target reduces the magnitude of visual chronostasis by about 58 ms, with the effects of the saccade-induced dilation and auditory compression adding linearly to visual time perception (model fit R = 0.962).^[5] This linear integration indicates that auditory signals dominate over visual ones in temporal processing during eye movements, with auditory cues carrying a higher relative weight (0.539) compared to saccadic effects (0.385).^[5] Such interactions highlight how non-visual inputs can counteract visual overestimation, compressing perceived temporal gaps by merging auditory onsets with post-saccadic visual events.^[5] These findings have implications for audiovisual speech perception, where precise temporal alignment between auditory and visual cues is crucial; auditory dominance in multisensory chronostasis may help maintain perceptual continuity during rapid eye movements in dynamic environments like conversation.^[5] Neural suppression during saccades, as observed in visual processing, likely extends to cross-modal binding, allowing the brain to fuse auditory and visual temporal signals for coherent perception.^[5] Manual chronostasis manifests as an overestimation of the duration of stimuli presented immediately after voluntary manual actions, such as pointing or reaching toward an object. In a foundational experiment, participants actively reached to touch a tactile stimulus and subsequently overestimated the time their hand had been in contact with it by 90–120 ms relative to static conditions without movement.^[23] This temporal dilation arises from a perceptual backdating mechanism, where tactile awareness is referred to a time preceding the actual physical contact, facilitating seamless integration of sensory input during the action.^[23] The strength of this illusion is closely tied to action intentionality, with greater overestimation occurring for self-initiated movements compared to static conditions. Self-generated manual actions generate internal predictive signals, such as efference copies of motor commands, which contribute to the backward extension of perceived time and enhance the illusion's magnitude.^[24] In contrast, passive transport of the limb—where movement is imposed without voluntary intent—results in minimal or absent dilation, as the lack of efferent signaling disrupts the predictive remapping of sensory events.^[23] Effector specificity plays a key role, with hand actions eliciting a consistent temporal dilation of approximately 100 ms, comparable to that observed in smaller saccadic eye movements but modulated by the precision demands of the limb. For instance, reaching gestures produce reliable overestimation regardless of reach extent (e.g., short reaches of ~250 ms vs. longer ones of ~370 ms), underscoring the role of motor planning in fine-grained manual control over coarser oculomotor shifts.^[23] This effect extends to visual stimuli following hand movements, where perceived duration expands for pointing actions directed away from the body, reflecting directional influences on motor preparation.^[25] Representative examples include adaptations of the clock illusion during voluntary finger shifts or head turns to fixate on a timepiece, where the initial second-hand movement appears prolonged by 100–200 ms post-action, distinct from scenarios involving static conditions that yield no such perceptual stretch.^[23] These manual variants highlight how intentional motor outputs bind temporal perception to action outcomes, briefly referencing broader concepts like temporal binding without relying on sensory inputs alone.

Modulating Factors

Oculomotor and Spatial Factors

Oculomotor factors play a central role in modulating the magnitude of visual chronostasis, particularly through properties of saccadic eye movements. The amplitude of a saccade, which determines its angular extent, directly influences the strength of the illusion. Larger saccades, such as those spanning 50° compared to 10°, result in a greater perceived temporal extension of the post-saccadic stimulus, with the bias increasing proportionally to the saccade's duration due to extended periods of visual suppression during the eye movement.^[3] This relationship arises because longer saccades prolong the phase of reduced visual sensitivity, leading to a more pronounced compensatory overestimation of the stimulus onset duration, typically on the order of 100-200 ms for standard experimental saccades around 10-20° in amplitude.^[13] Spatial continuity between pre- and post-saccadic visual scenes is essential for eliciting chronostasis, as disruptions to this continuity significantly attenuate the effect. The illusion requires the post-saccadic stimulus to appear at the expected fixation point without noticeable displacement; for instance, if the target shifts by as little as 3° horizontally during the saccade, the temporal dilation is eliminated, preventing the brain from attributing continuity across the movement.^[3] Such spatial disruptions, like gaps or jumps in the stimulus position, can reduce the effect by up to 50% or more, underscoring the role of stable spatial mapping in preserving perceptual continuity.^[26] The directionality of saccades also contributes to variations in chronostasis, with effects tied to mechanisms minimizing retinal slip and maintaining stable vision. Horizontal saccades tend to produce stronger illusions than vertical ones, as horizontal movements align more closely with typical scanning patterns and elicit greater suppression to counteract image motion across the retina.^[1] This asymmetry reflects the oculomotor system's prioritization of horizontal gaze shifts in everyday visual exploration, enhancing the temporal binding for stimuli encountered after such movements.^[27] Environmental layout further influences chronostasis by affecting the perception of spatial continuity in the visual field. In cluttered backgrounds with multiple competing elements, the illusion weakens because the post-saccadic stimulus competes for continuity attribution, reducing the perceived duration extension compared to sparse, uniform environments that facilitate seamless perceptual bridging.^[3] For example, the presence of a static second object in the display maintains the effect if it remains stable, but dynamic changes or visual noise in the background disrupt this, lowering the magnitude by emphasizing novelty over continuity.^[3]

Attentional and Cognitive Factors

Attention redirection plays a key role in modulating the chronostasis illusion, particularly through pre-saccade cues that direct focus to the saccade target. When participants receive exogenous or endogenous cues prior to initiating a saccade, the perceived duration of the post-saccadic stimulus is extended, with studies showing an enhancement of approximately 150 ms in temporal dilation at short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 100 ms, likely due to strengthened binding between the motor command and subsequent sensory input.^[28] This effect highlights how attentional allocation to the target location facilitates perceptual continuity across the eye movement, amplifying the illusion's magnitude compared to uncued conditions. Cognitive load from concurrent tasks significantly attenuates the chronostasis effect, indicating top-down attentional control as a modulator. In experiments involving dual-task paradigms, such as simultaneous timing judgments and secondary cognitive demands, the typical overestimation of post-saccadic duration is reduced by about 31 ms, with greater diminishment under high-load conditions like no-gap saccade paradigms where point of subjective equality (PSE) shifts from 460 ms to 415 ms.^[21] This suggests that divided attention disrupts the dedicated processing resources needed for temporal binding, supporting a role for executive functions in sustaining the illusion. Expectancy influences the strength of chronostasis, with intentional and predicted saccades producing larger temporal distortions than unexpected or reactive ones. Cued saccades, where participants anticipate the movement direction, result in backwards shifts in perceived onset reaching up to 150 ms prior to actual saccade initiation, and overall expansions of 100–150 ms for longer SOAs (400–700 ms), contrasting with minimal effects in uncued scenarios.^[28] Intentional gaze shifts thus amplify the dilation, consistent with predictive mechanisms that align motor efference copies with sensory expectations to maintain temporal continuity.

Stimulus and Environmental Factors

Stimulus properties significantly influence the magnitude of chronostasis. Duration and intensity of the stimulus also modulate chronostasis. Short-duration stimuli, particularly those under 1 second with high salience, maximize the illusion by aligning with the temporal window of post-saccadic integration, where overestimation is most pronounced.^[27] Differences across sensory domains highlight varying sensitivities to stimulus attributes. By contrast, visual chronostasis shows less dependence on shape attributes, prioritizing luminance and motion over form.

Theoretical Explanations

Continuity and Filling-In Hypotheses

The continuity hypothesis proposes that chronostasis functions to preserve perceptual seamlessness during saccadic eye movements by antedating the perceived onset of post-saccadic stimuli to a moment just prior to saccade initiation, thereby extending the subjective duration of the pre-saccadic fixation and bridging the temporal discontinuity caused by saccadic suppression.^[6] This mechanism relies on extraretinal signals, such as efference copies of the motor command, to align sensory perception with the brain's internal timeline, ensuring a continuous flow of visual experience despite the ~200-300 ms period of degraded input during the saccade.^[3] Seminal work by Yarrow et al. (2001) demonstrated this through the stopped-clock illusion, where the first post-saccadic second hand position appears frozen for an additional ~100-200 ms, scaling with saccade amplitude to compensate for larger gaps in longer movements. Supporting evidence includes the invariance of chronostasis across saccade categories—from voluntary self-timed saccades to reflexive express saccades—indicating a low-level, subcortical efferent trigger rather than higher cognitive processes.^[2] Yarrow, Johnson, Haggard, and Rothwell (2004) further showed consistent effects in experiments varying saccade context, reinforcing that the illusion resolves perceptual discontinuities inherent to rapid, ballistic eye shifts.^[29] Notably, chronostasis is absent during smooth pursuit eye movements, where continuous visual tracking avoids suppression and temporal gaps, highlighting its specificity to saccadic disruptions.^[30] The filling-in process complements continuity by interpolating "missing" temporal information via extraretinal cues, without altering spatial perception, to mask awareness of saccadic suppression and maintain subjective temporal coherence.^[3] In this view, the brain retrospectively attributes extended duration to the post-saccadic stimulus based on pre-saccadic content, dissociating time perception from motion trajectories; for instance, observers perceive a stationary clock hand as paused at its new position rather than filling in a moving path.^[31] This temporal adjustment, rather than literal sensory filling, aligns with findings that chronostasis persists even when spatial continuity is compromised, emphasizing a purely durational compensation.^[32] However, these hypotheses face limitations in explaining multisensory chronostasis, where auditory or tactile variants exhibit forward shifts in perceived timing rather than backward antedating, suggesting more complex cross-modal integration beyond visual continuity mechanisms.^[28] Additionally, while neural suppression during saccades provides a foundational gap for filling-in, the precise subcortical loci (e.g., superior colliculus) remain speculative without direct causal evidence.^[3]

Temporal Binding and Prediction Models

Temporal binding refers to the perceptual compression of the interval between a voluntary action and its sensory outcome, creating a subjective sense of causal linkage. In the context of chronostasis, this phenomenon manifests as a form of action-backdating, where the perceived onset of the post-movement stimulus is shifted earlier to align with the action, thereby binding the two events temporally. A 2020 study demonstrated this through experiments contrasting saccadic chronostasis with intentional binding in keypress tasks, finding that while keypresses compressed action-effect intervals by approximately 87-141 ms, saccades instead produced dilation without equivalent binding, suggesting backdating as a mechanism to maintain perceived continuity.^[28] Prediction models posit that the brain employs forward models to anticipate sensory consequences of movements, generating internal expectations that influence temporal perception. These models allow the brain to predict post-movement stimuli based on motor plans, leading to an overestimation of stimulus duration if the actual sensory input deviates from the prediction, as seen in chronostasis where the first fixated stimulus appears prolonged to match the anticipated timeline. This anticipatory process integrates efference copies—internal signals of motor commands—with sensory feedback to optimize perception during action.^[33] The efference copy plays a central role by conveying motor command details to sensory areas, establishing temporal expectations that trigger the chronostasis illusion. Specifically, these copies generate predictions about when post-saccadic stimuli should appear, resulting in a perceived backward shift of the stimulus onset by approximately 50 ms relative to the actual timing, across various saccade types, including self-timed and reflexive variants, supporting a subcortical origin for this efference signal, likely from the superior colliculus, ensuring consistent illusion magnitude.^[2] These mechanisms extend to manual chronostasis, where tactile perception of a touched object is backdated to precede physical contact, mirroring visual effects through similar efference-based predictions during arm movements. Additionally, external cues such as synchronous sounds can reduce the illusion's magnitude by providing alternative temporal anchors that override motor-derived predictions, as shown in tasks where auditory stimuli diminished visual chronostasis by integrating cross-modal information. This highlights how environmental factors modulate binding and prediction processes.^[4]^[34]

Experimental Evidence and Recent Developments

Classic Experiments

One of the foundational experiments demonstrating chronostasis involved participants making voluntary saccades to a visual clock displaying a moving second hand. In this paradigm, observers fixated on a peripheral target before saccading to the clock, after which they reported the perceived position of the second hand at the moment of fixation landing, often via a button press to indicate the timing. The results showed a consistent overestimation of the duration for which the clock hand appeared stationary, averaging approximately 150 ms longer than the actual physical time elapsed.^[6] Building on this setup, subsequent studies varied the amplitude and type (e.g., pro- vs. anti-saccades) of saccades to examine the illusion's specificity to oculomotor parameters. Participants executed saccades across horizontal directions toward the clock target, with eye movements precisely monitored to ensure accurate landing on the fixation point. The chronostasis effect persisted across types but was strongest when the saccade precisely terminated on the target, confirming that the illusion depends on the post-saccadic fixation rather than the saccade trajectory alone.^[6]^[2] Early investigations into the role of attention further clarified that chronostasis requires an actual gaze change, not merely an attentional shift. In experiments from the early 2000s, participants shifted covert attention to a peripheral clock without moving their eyes, using cues to direct focus while maintaining central fixation. No temporal overestimation occurred in these conditions, distinguishing the effect from attentional mechanisms alone.^[2] Methodological rigor in these classic studies relied on precise eye-tracking systems, such as infrared video-based trackers, to record saccade onset, duration, and landing accuracy, ensuring that only valid trials with clean eye movements were analyzed. Subjective time perception was quantified using scaling methods, where participants estimated durations relative to reference intervals or adjusted stimuli to match perceived onset times. Additionally, trials contaminated by microsaccades—small involuntary fixational movements—were excluded through post-hoc analysis of eye position data to prevent confounding the saccade-induced effect.^[2]

Contemporary Research Findings

Recent research has explored the influence of action intentionality on chronostasis, demonstrating differences in the illusion's magnitude based on action intentionality and effector choice. A 2020 study compared keypress and saccade actions, varying their intentionality, and found stronger temporal expansion for cued saccades compared to self-initiated ones, and temporal compression (intentional binding) for keypress actions, supporting theories of efferent signals in perceptual binding.^[28] Multisensory interactions have also been examined, revealing how auditory cues modulate visual chronostasis. In a 2023 experiment, synchronous sounds presented during saccades linearly reduced the perceived duration of the post-saccadic visual stimulus, indicating additive effects between saccadic suppression and auditory influences on time perception, with broader implications for audiovisual integration in dynamic environments.^[5] Advancements in understanding saccade-induced distortions continued into 2025, with studies showing that saccades not only prolong the first post-movement stimulus (consistent with classic chronostasis) but also compress the perception of subsequent stimuli, creating opposing temporal effects. These findings highlight a brief, uneven attentional distribution following eye movements, applicable to both oculomotor and manual action variants where similar perceptual consistencies emerge across movement categories.^[35] Emerging trends integrate chronostasis into virtual reality (VR) contexts, where saccadic illusions persist and influence time perception during immersive tasks. A 2024 investigation showed that rhythmic auditory stimuli in VR can modulate general subjective timing in immersive tasks, suggesting applications for designing more natural temporal experiences in simulated environments to mitigate perceptual distortions.^[36]

References

[1]
Vision: When The Clock Appears to Stop - ScienceDirect.com
The mechanism of chronostasis may be a strategy for backdating such events to a time before the eyes were in motion in order to preserve perceptual continuity.
[2]
Consistent chronostasis effects across saccade categories imply a ...
Saccadic chronostasis refers to the subjective temporal lengthening of the first visual stimulus perceived after an eye movement, and is most commonly ...
[3]
[PDF] Saccadic chronostasis and the continuity of subjective temporal ...
In this paper, we discuss our preferred account of the illusion, which posits that the onset of the post-saccadic stimulus is antedated to a moment just prior ...
[4]
Manual chronostasis: tactile perception precedes physical contact
We hypothesize that chronostasis-like effects occur when movement produces uncertainty about the onset of a sensory event.Missing: review | Show results with:review<|control11|><|separator|>
[5]
Sound reduces saccadic chronostasis illusion - ScienceDirect
A synchronous sound reduces saccadic visual chronostasis magnitude. The effects of the saccade and sound on visual time perception add linearly.
[6]
Illusory Perceptions of Space and Time Preserve Cross-Saccadic ...
For a short period, the clock appears to have stopped (chronostasis). Here we show that the illusion occurs because the brain extends the percept of the ...Missing: et al paper
[7]
Chronostasis: Current Biology - Cell Press
The 'stopped clock illusion'. An illusory backwards extension of time perception following a saccadic eye movement.
[8]
Manual Chronostasis: Tactile Perception Precedes Physical Contact
Jul 1, 2003 · When saccading to a silent clock, observers sometimes think that the second hand has paused momentarily. This effect has been termed chronostasis.Missing: seminal papers
[9]
The 'stopped clock illusion' - Wikenigma
The technical term for the illusion is Chronostasis (static time). It has not yet been fully explained. Αlthough the illusion is seemingly trivial, it does ...Missing: explanation | Show results with:explanation
[10]
Temporal dilation: the chronostasis illusion and spatial attention
This chapter examines the relation between chronostasis illusion and spatial attention. It discusses saccadic chronostasis which describes the temporal ...
[11]
Saccade - EyeWiki
Jun 13, 2025 · Background. A saccade is a rapid, conjugate, eye movement that shifts the center of gaze from one part of the visual field to another. Saccades ...Background · Parameters · Classifications · Neuroanatomy
[12]
Types of Eye Movements and Their Functions - Neuroscience - NCBI
Saccades are rapid, ballistic movements of the eyes that abruptly change the point of fixation. They range in amplitude from the small movements made while ...
[13]
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(02)01096-5
[14]
Perceptual saccadic suppression starts in the retina - Nature
Apr 24, 2020 · b At approximately 65 ms after saccade onset, substantial recovery was visible (note the different x-axis scale from a), still with stronger ...
[15]
Saccadic suppression as a perceptual consequence of efficient ...
May 2, 2017 · Indeed, previous work has shown that saccadic suppression is controlled centrally, and typically lasts for >100 ms even for saccadic movements ...
[16]
Time course of inhibition induced by a putative saccadic ... - PubMed
A typical saccadic suppression precedes the saccadic eye movements by 30-60 ms, lasts 120-180 ms, and is followed by a 100-150 ms facilitation. Recently, we ...
[17]
Psychological and Neural Mechanisms of Subjective Time Dilation
Apr 25, 2011 · One class of subjective duration effects are observed right before saccadic eye movement: in chronostasis, a backdating mechanism for ...
[18]
Page not found | Nature
**Summary:**
[19]
Spatio-temporal topography of saccadic overestimation of time
May 3, 2013 · Such stimuli are known to be unaffected by saccadic suppression (Burr, Morrone, & Ross, 1994). ... Temporal dilation: The chronostasis illusion ...
[20]
https://doi.org/10.1038/414302a
[21]
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-025-02116-1
[22]
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(02)01219-8
[23]
Spatial consequences of bridging the saccadic gap - PMC
When observers saccade to a stationary object they overestimate its duration, as if the brain were filling in the saccadic gap with the post-saccadic image. We ...
[24]
Spatial aspects of perisaccadic chronostasis | JOV - Journal of Vision
Subjects initially fixated a target on the horizontal meridian. A variable time after trial onset subjects were cued to make a 25° saccade towards a saccade ...<|separator|>
[25]
The role of action intentionality and effector in the subjective ... - Nature
Oct 9, 2020 · Saccadic chronostasis, the “stopped clock illusion”, represents one such temporal distortion in which the movement of the clock hand after the ...
[26]
Saccade-induced temporal distortion: opposing effects of time ...
Apr 11, 2025 · Saccadic eye movements, or saccades, can distort our perception of time, as evidenced by the phenomenon of Chronostasis, where the first ...Experiment 1 · Experiment 2 · Experiment 3
[27]
Saccade-induced temporal distortion: opposing effects of time ...
Apr 11, 2025 · Morrone, M. C., Ross, J., & Burr, D. C. (2005). Saccadic eye ... Temporal dilation: The chronostasis illusion and Spatial attention.
[28]
An Illusory Motion in Stationary Stimuli Alters Their Perceived Duration
Sep 18, 2023 · The PSE represents the duration of the target at which subjective perception equals the previously memorized reference duration. To assess ...Missing: equation | Show results with:equation
[29]
Auditory and visual distractors disrupt multisensory temporal acuity ...
Jul 19, 2017 · We found decreased performance on the CTOJ task as well as increases in both the positive and negative just noticeable difference with ...
[30]
Duration perception of visual and auditory oddball stimuli
Jan 17, 2014 · Chronostasis describes a related effect ... Effects of pitch distance and likelihood on the perceived duration of deviant auditory events.
[31]
Action, arousal, and subjective time - ScienceDirect.com
The term saccadic chronostasis refers to the subjective temporal lengthening of a post-saccadic visual stimulus (Yarrow, Haggard, Heal, Brown, & Rothwell, 2001; ...Missing: paper | Show results with:paper
[32]
Apparent Time Interval of Visual Stimuli Is Compressed during Fast ...
Apr 8, 2015 · A one-way repeated measures ANOVA indicated no significant effect ... Smooth pursuit eye movements improve temporal resolution for color ...
[33]
Spatial consequences of bridging the saccadic gap - ScienceDirect
The saccadic chronostasis illusion means that the post-saccadic object will have an extended subjective duration, which will therefore be inconsistent with ...
[34]
Illusory perceptions of space and time preserve cross-saccadic ...
Aug 9, 2025 · Saccadic chronostasis refers to the subjective temporal lengthening of the first visual stimulus perceived after an eye movement, and is most ...
[35]
How voluntary actions modulate time perception - PMC
Voluntary actions may cause both compression and dilation of subjective time. For example, in saccadic chronostasis (Yarrow et al. 2001) participants judge the ...Missing: post- | Show results with:post-
[36]
Sound reduces saccadic chronostasis illusion - PubMed
Dec 17, 2023 · The saccadic chronostasis illusion refers to the duration overestimation of the first visual stimulation after saccadic eye movement, ...Missing: environmental clutter
[37]
Psychophysiology of rhythmic stimuli and time experience in virtual ...
The stopped-clock illusion, or saccadic chronostasis, is a phenomenon that occurs when making a saccade (here referred to as an eye movement) to a silent clock.