Threshold models of temporal-order judgments evaluated by a ternary response task.

Abstract

This article examines various predictions of temporal-order judgment models (triggered-moment, attention-switching, and perceptual-moment models). These model tests are based on a ternary response-category approach: In each trial two stimuli (e.g., a tone and a light) are presented at times tx and ty, respectively. The time difference d = ty-tx was varied for each trial. After each presentation the subject selected one of three possible responses (“tone and light simultaneously,” “tone first,” or “light first”). Two psychometric functions can be generated from these response categories. It is shown that several models of temporal-order judgments constrain the relationship between these two functions. It was examined for different data sets whether the predicted relationships are satisfied. Several violations of the predicted relationships were observed, providing strong evidence against perceptual-moment models, triggered-moment models, and certain versions of attention-switching models. The proposed tests for each model do not depend on specific distributional assumptions of perceptual latencies. A modified attention-switching model with dwell times depending on stimulus properties might account for the present findings.