Abstract
In the present study, a time discrimination task was used to investigate the effect of different contexts for intervals varying from 400 to 1600 ms. A potential time-space interaction was controlled, and participants used both manual responses (Experiments 1 and 2) and vocal responses (Experiment 3). Three ranges of durations were employed (short, middle and long), and within each range condition, three standard values were used (400, 700, and 1000 ms; 700, 1000, and 1300 ms; and 1000, 1300, and 1600 ms). Within each range, standard intervals were randomized (Experiments 1 and 3) or remained constant (Experiment 2) within a block of trials. Our results suggest that context influences time discrimination performances only when the temporal range under investigation is below 1300 ms and the temporal intervals varied within blocks. In the case of temporal intervals longer than 1300 ms, participants presented a tendency to respond “long” independently of the procedure used. Moreover, our results suggested that performances in a discrimination task are mainly influenced by the fact of varying standard durations within blocks, and not much by the time-space compatibility.
Highlights
There are different signs in the time perception literature revealing the vulnerability of psychological time; different contexts move the output of temporal mechanisms in different directions
To further investigate the effect of response key and spatial compatibility on time perception, we considered the responses as “congruent” when the comparison duration was short and the short response key was placed on the left side of the keyboard; and we considered the responses as “incongruent” when the comparison duration was short and the short response key was placed on the right side of the keyboard
Whether vocal or manual responses are used, participants showed a positive time-order error (TOE) when the standard intervals was shorter (400 ms in Group 1 and 700 ms in Group 2) and the comparison was shorter than the standard; a negative TOE was observed when the standard interval was the longest of the experimental setting (1000 ms for Group 1 and 1300 for Group 2) and the comparison was longer than the standard
Summary
There are different signs in the time perception literature revealing the vulnerability of psychological time; different contexts move the output of temporal mechanisms in different directions. The time scale of the stimulus and the task used to measure participants’ subjective duration have a great influence on the mechanisms involved in temporal processing (Gil and Droit-Volet, 2011; Mioni et al, 2014b). In the field of time perception, researchers have mainly used intervals in the range of 100 ms to a few seconds (Grondin, 2001, 2010). This temporal range is important in humans because it involves processes from motor control, speech generation, playing music, and dancing to more complex processes like learning and decision making (Buhusi and Meck, 2005)
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