Abstract
When individuals are asked to reproduce intervals of stimuli that are intermixedly presented at various times, longer intervals are often underestimated and shorter intervals overestimated. This phenomenon may be attributed to the central tendency of time perception, and suggests that our brain optimally encodes a stimulus interval based on current stimulus input and prior knowledge of the distribution of stimulus intervals. Two distinct systems are thought to be recruited in the perception of sub- and supra-second intervals. Sub-second timing is subject to local sensory processing, whereas supra-second timing depends on more centralized mechanisms. To clarify the factors that influence time perception, the present study investigated how both sensory modality and timescale affect the central tendency. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to reproduce sub- or supra-second intervals, defined by visual or auditory stimuli. In the sub-second range, the magnitude of the central tendency was significantly larger for visual intervals compared to auditory intervals, while visual and auditory intervals exhibited a correlated and comparable central tendency in the supra-second range. In Experiment 2, the ability to discriminate sub-second intervals in the reproduction task was controlled across modalities by using an interval discrimination task. Even when the ability to discriminate intervals was controlled, visual intervals exhibited a larger central tendency than auditory intervals in the sub-second range. In addition, the magnitude of the central tendency for visual and auditory sub-second intervals was significantly correlated. These results suggest that a common modality-independent mechanism is responsible for the supra-second central tendency, and that both the modality-dependent and modality-independent components of the timing system contribute to the central tendency in the sub-second range.
Highlights
Interval timing in the millisecond-to-second range is vital for many human behaviors [1]
A two-way repeatedmeasures ANOVA revealed significant main effects of the stimulus modality (F(1,76) = 17.5, p < .001) and timescale (F(1,76) = 55.8, p < .001), as well as a significant interaction (F(1,76) = 9.20, p = .003). These results indicate that (1) the visual modality is more susceptible to the central tendency, (2) the magnitude of the central tendency is larger in the supra-second range, and (3) the difference in the magnitude of the central tendency between visual and auditory intervals is larger in the sub-second range
We investigated how stimulus modality and timescale affect individual differences in the central tendency of time perception
Summary
Interval timing in the millisecond-to-second range is vital for many human behaviors [1]. Several computational models of time perception include sensory modality dependent components, especially for sub-second timing, such as time-dependent changes in the state of the neural network [23, 24], or time-sensitive mechanisms in early sensory processing [3, 4] In line with these studies, Cicchini et al (2012) found that visually defined sub-second intervals induced a larger central tendency than auditorily defined sub-second intervals due to the higher temporal precision of the auditory modality. We hypothesized that the central tendency occurs differently for auditory and visual timing in the sub-second range and depends on modality-specific processing, whereas a common modality-independent timing system regulates the central tendency in the supra-second range. Time encoding in the sub-second range results from differences in temporal sensitivity between the visual and auditory systems by controlling for differences in the discrimination of intervals in the sub-second range between the two modalities
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