Latency and duration of the action interruption in surprise

Cognitive and biological theories of emotion consider surprise as an emotional response to unexpected events. Four experiments examined the latency and the duration of one behavioural component of surprise: The interruption of ongoing action. Participants were presented with an unannounced visual eventÐthe appearance of new perceptual objectsÐduring the execution of a continuous actionÐa rapid alternate finger tappingÐwhich allowed a precise measurement of the latency, and the duration of an action interruption induced by the surprising event. Of the participants, 78% interrupted the tapping with a mean latency of 214 ms and a mean duration of 995 ms. Variations of the number and perceptual heterogeneity of the new objects revealed that the perceptual analysis of the surprising event contributes significantly to the interruption duration.