Abstract
According to a generalized magnitude system, the representation of time,space and number relies on a common cognitive mechanism. However, in thecontext of negative emotional stimuli, temporal durations undergo a subjectiveoverestimation, while numerosity judgments are underestimated. Thisfinding clearly challenged the existence of a generalized magnitude system. Inthis study, we aimed to investigate whether angry faces biases both temporaland spatial estimates compared to neutral faces in children aged 5 -6-year-old and 9 - 10-year-old. Children were to judge as short or long eitherthe temporal interval or the distance separating two visual stimuli in a bisectiontask. Overall, the study suggests that negative emotion with high arousal(angry faces) leads to a distortion of both duration and distance. Such distortionis reported early in development, even before the maturation of timeperception.