Abstract
We recently proposed that systematic underreproduction of time is caused by a general judgment bias towards earlier responses, instead of reflecting a genuine misperception of temporal intervals. Here we tested whether this bias can be explained by the uncertainty associated with temporal judgments. We applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to inhibit neuronal processes in the right posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and tested its effects on time discrimination and reproduction tasks. The results show increased certainty for discriminative time judgments after PPC inhibition. They suggest that the right PPC plays an inhibitory role for time perception, possibly by mediating the multisensory integration between temporal stimuli and other quantities. Importantly, this increased judgment certainty had no influence on the degree of temporal underreproduction. We conclude that the systematic underreproduction of time is not caused by uncertainty for temporal judgments.
Highlights
The goal of psychophysics is to describe the relation between physical and psychological realms [1], and, to this end, researchers should possess complete control over the physical stimuli used in their experiments [2]
Numerous applications of this task have consistently revealed that the reproduced intervals are shorter than the standards [5]. This phenomenon has often been interpreted as an erroneous perception of time, in the sense that the second duration is perceived as longer than the standard, and it is terminated too early (e.g., [6]). This interpretation was questioned in a recent study [4], in which we proposed that the negative errors in time reproduction tasks might be caused by the asymmetric flow of perceived time
We proposed that systematic negative errors in time reproduction tasks are caused by a general judgment bias towards earlier responses, instead of reflecting a genuine misperception of temporal intervals [3, 4]
Summary
The goal of psychophysics is to describe the relation between physical and psychological realms [1], and, to this end, researchers should possess complete control over the physical stimuli used in their experiments [2]. While most physical qualities can be presented in an ascending and a descending manner (e.g., weights can increase and decrease), perceived time always runs in the same direction This peculiarity is referred to as the anisotropy of time and it can explain some well-known phenomena in timing research, for example, the underreproduction of temporal intervals [4]. We examined judgment certainty as a potential cause for the general bias towards earlier responses in time reproduction and its role for the systematic underreproduction of temporal intervals. We tested whether altered certainty regarding temporal judgments results in an attenuation of negative errors in a time reproduction task. To this end, the right PPC was inhibited via continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS; [14,15,16]). It was hypothesized that the systematic underreproduction of time was attenuated when temporal certainty is high
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