Abstract
The ability to estimate time intervals subserves many of our behaviors and perceptual experiences. However, it is not clear how aperiodic (AP) stimuli affect our perception of time intervals across sensory modalities. To address this question, we evaluated the human capacity to discriminate between two acoustic (A), visual (V) or audiovisual (AV) time intervals of trains of scattered pulses. We first measured the periodicity of those stimuli and then sought for correlations with the accuracy and reaction times (RTs) of the subjects. We found that, for all time intervals tested in our experiment, the visual system consistently perceived AP stimuli as being shorter than the periodic (P) ones. In contrast, such a compression phenomenon was not apparent during auditory trials. Our conclusions are: first, the subjects exposed to P stimuli are more likely to measure their durations accurately. Second, perceptual time compression occurs for AP visual stimuli. Lastly, AV discriminations are determined by A dominance rather than by AV enhancement.
Highlights
The ability to estimate the duration of an event is fundamental for many of our sensory and motor behaviors such as talking, walking or even cooking, and dancing
To understand how the brain estimates the duration of processes, linked to human behavior, such as how music intervals create the perception of the beat (Pashler, 2001) and rhythm (Geiser et al, 2014), requires studying temporal estimations of aperiodic (AP) patterns in different contexts and models
We found that time intervals of AP structures were perceived as compressed during V discriminations, whereas A, and AV accuracies and reaction times (RTs) were globally affected
Summary
The ability to estimate the duration of an event is fundamental for many of our sensory and motor behaviors such as talking, walking or even cooking, and dancing Such ability can be altered by magnitude, beat, sensory congruity, or saliency of an event (Xuan et al, 2007; van Wassenhove et al, 2008; Grube and Griffiths, 2009; Kösem et al, 2012; Kanai et al, 2017). To understand how the brain estimates the duration of processes, linked to human behavior, such as how music intervals create the perception of the beat (Pashler, 2001) and rhythm (Geiser et al, 2014), requires studying temporal estimations of aperiodic (AP) patterns in different contexts and models. The auditory system is more appropriate at perceiving temporal modulations
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