Abstract
Perception of the passage of time is essential for safe planning and navigation of everyday activities. Findings from the literature have demonstrated a gross underestimation of time interval in right-hemisphere damaged neglect patients, but not in non-neglect unilaterally-damaged patients, compared to controls. This study aimed to investigate retrospective estimation of the duration of a target detection task over two occasions, in 30 stroke patients (12 left-side stroke 15 right-side stroke, and 3 right-side stroke with neglect) and 10 transient ischemic attack patients, relative to 31 age-matched controls. Performances on visual short-term and working memory tasks were also examined to investigate the associations between timing abilities with residual cognitive functioning. Initial results revealed evidence of perceptual time underestimation, not just in neglect patients, but also in non-neglect unilaterally-damaged stroke patients and transient ischemic attack patients. Three months later, underestimation of time persisted only in left-side stroke and right-side stroke with neglect patients, who also demonstrated reduced short-term and working memory abilities. Findings from this study suggest a predictive role of residual cognitive impairments in determining the prognosis of perceptual timing abnormalities.
Highlights
The mechanistic operation behind time perception has traditionally been explained by Treisman’s Information Processing Model[14] that describes the operation of a pacemaker-accumulator system, or an “internal clock”[7,15,16]
Further planned contrast comparisons revealed that task duration was significantly underestimated in left-hemisphere damage (LHD) (M = 46.25, SD = 17.98, p = 0.005, Cohen’s d = − 0.98), right-hemisphere damage (RHD) (M = 56.67, SD = 24.62, p = 0.023, d = − 0.73), right-hemisphere damaged patients with neglect (RHD-N) (M = 7.33, SD = 3.06, p = 0.002, d = − 1.93) and transient ischemic attack (TIA) (M = 45.50, SD = 21.66, p = 0.008, d = − 1.00) groups, compared to controls (M = 86.94, SD = 56.71) (Fig. 1)
Further planned contrast comparisons revealed that task duration was significantly underestimated in LHD (M = 46.11, SD = 33.61, p = 0.04, d = −0.81) and RHD-N (M = 10.33, SD = 0.58, p = 0.01, d = − 1.53) groups, compared to controls
Summary
The mechanistic operation behind time perception has traditionally been explained by Treisman’s Information Processing Model[14] that describes the operation of a pacemaker-accumulator system, or an “internal clock”[7,15,16]. The underestimation has been attributed to attentional deficits (reduced allocation of attention to time due to attentional resources being used for the external task at hand) resulting in a deceleration of the pacemaker[35,37] On another end, impairments in spatially maintaining the representation of pulses in the accumulator (i.e., visual working memory deficits), or in comparing this temporary representation of pulses to reference memory, have been suggested as plausible reasons[6,42].In addition, within non-neglect stroke patients, only one study so far has revealed significantly impaired time estimation (as measured by duration discrimination of auditory tones) following right-hemisphere damage (RHD)[38], while other studies have only demonstrated a similar trend following RHD6,37. This is the first study to investigate perceptual timing abilities in TIA patients
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