Self-prioritization effect across varying intervals in sub-second duration perception

Duration perception—the cognitive processing of temporal continuity—plays a crucial role in information processing and is essential for human survival and development. Prior research has demonstrated that time perception is inherently subjective, with self-related stimuli exerting particularly strong effects among the various factors influencing perceived duration. The present study investigates how self-related stimuli affect the perception of time within the sub-second range, specifically examining whether the self-processing advantage varies across different objective durations under one second. A growing body of literature has debated whether this advantage is uniform or segmented across temporal intervals within this brief window. To address this question, two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 employed a self-duration comparison task to assess how self-related stimuli influence duration judgments. The results showed that at longer sub-second durations, the point of subjective equality was significantly extended in the self-name condition compared to the stranger-name condition. However, there was no significant difference in Weber’s ratio between the two conditions. Experiment 2 used a self-duration matching paradigm to further examine the effects of self-referential stimuli across varying sub-second intervals. The results revealed that both the drift rate (v) and non-decision time (t) were significantly increased in the self-referential condition. Furthermore, the decision threshold (a) and starting point bias (z) were significantly higher in the self-referential condition, but only at longer sub-second durations. Together, these findings demonstrate that self-related stimuli confer a stable advantage in duration perception, with distinct temporal dynamics depending on interval length. By applying the Drift Diffusion Model (DDM), the study offers new insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying the self-prioritization effect and underscores the importance of considering specific temporal intervals in research on self-related information processing.