Temporal Judgment Research Articles

Maltreated Children's Ability to Make Temporal Judgments Using a Recurring Landmark Event.

This study examined whether maltreated children are capable of judging the location and order of significant events with respect to a recurring landmark event. One hundred sixty-seven 6- to 10-year-old maltreated children were asked whether the current day, their last court visit, and their last change in placement were "near" their birthday and "before or after" their birthday. Children showed some understanding that the target event was "near" and "before" their birthday when their birthday was less than 3 months hence, but were relatively insensitive to preceding birthdays. Therefore, children exhibited a prospective bias, preferentially answering with reference to a forthcoming birthday rather than a past birthday. The results demonstrate that the recurring nature of some landmark events makes questions about them referentially ambiguous and children's answers subject to misinterpretation.

Emotional Voices Distort Time: Behavioral and Neural Correlates

The present study explored the effect of vocally expressed emotions on duration perception. Recordings of the syllable ‘ah’ spoken in a disgusted (negative), surprised (positive), and neutral voice were subjected to a compression/stretching algorithm producing seven durations ranging from 300 to 1200 ms. The resulting stimuli served in a duration bisection procedure in which participants indicated whether a stimulus was more similar in duration to a previously studied 300 ms (short) or 1200 ms (long) 440 Hz tone. Behavioural results indicate that disgusted expressions were perceived as shorter than surprised expressions in both men and women and this effect was related to perceived valence. Additionally, both emotional expressions were perceived as shorter than neutral expressions in women only and this effect was related to perceived arousal. Event-related potentials showed an influence of emotion and rate of acoustic change (fast for compressed/short and slow for stretched/long stimuli) on stimulus encoding in women only. Based on these findings, we suggest that emotions interfere with temporal processes and facilitate the influence of contextual information (e.g., rate of acoustic change, attention) on duration judgements. Because women are more sensitive than men to unattended vocal emotions, their temporal judgements are more strongly distorted.

Neural timing signal for precise tactile timing judgments.

The brain can precisely encode the temporal relationship between tactile inputs. While behavioural studies have demonstrated precise interfinger temporal judgments, the underlying neural mechanism remains unknown. Computationally, two kinds of neural responses can act as the information source. One is the phase-locked response to the phase of relatively slow inputs, and the other is the response to the amplitude change of relatively fast inputs. To isolate the contributions of these components, we measured performance of a synchrony judgment task for sine wave and amplitude-modulation (AM) wave stimuli. The sine wave stimulus was a low-frequency sinusoid, with the phase shifted in the asynchronous stimulus. The AM wave stimulus was a low-frequency sinusoidal AM of a 250-Hz carrier, with only the envelope shifted in the asynchronous stimulus. In the experiment, three stimulus pairs, two synchronous ones and one asynchronous one, were sequentially presented to neighboring fingers, and participants were asked to report which one was the asynchronous pair. We found that the asynchrony of AM waves could be detected as precisely as single impulse pair, with the threshold asynchrony being ∼20 ms. On the other hand, the asynchrony of sine waves could not be detected at all in the range from 5 to 30 Hz. Our results suggest that the timing signal for tactile judgments is provided not by the stimulus phase information but by the envelope of the response of the high-frequency-sensitive Pacini channel (PC), although they do not exclude a possible contribution of the envelope of non-PCs.

Systematic Underreproduction of Time Is Independent of Judgment Certainty.

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.

Temporal perception in joint action: This is MY action.

Here we investigated the temporal perception of self- and other-generated actions during sequential joint actions. Participants judged the perceived time of two events, the first triggered by the participant and the second by another agent, during a cooperative or competitive interaction, or by an unspecified mechanical cause. Results showed that participants perceived self-generated events as shifted earlier in time (anticipation temporal judgment bias) and non-self-generated events as shifted later in time (repulsion temporal judgment bias). This latter effect was observed independently from the kind of cause (i.e., agentive or mechanical) or interaction (i.e., cooperative or competitive). We suggest that this might represent a mental process which allows discriminating events that cannot plausibly be linked to one's own action. When an event immediately follows a self-generated one, temporal judgment biases operate as self-serving biases in order to separate self-generated events from events of another physical causality.

Trunk rotation affects temporal order judgments with direct saccades: Influence of handedness

Manipulation of the trunk midline has been shown to improve visuospatial performance in patients with unilateral visual neglect. The goal of the present study was to disentangle motor and perceptual components of egocentric midline manipulations and to investigate the contribution of individual hand preference. Two versions of visual temporal order judgment (TOJ) tasks were tested in healthy right- and left-handed subjects while trunk rotation was varied. In the congruent version, subjects were required to execute a saccade to the first of two horizontal stimuli presented with different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA). In the incongruent version, subjects were required to perform a vertical saccade to a pre-learned color target, thereby dissociating motor response from the perceptual stimulus location. The main findings of this study are a trunk rotation and response direction specific impact on temporal judgments in form of a prior entry bias for right hemifield stimuli during rightward trunk rotation, but only in the congruent task. This trunk rotation-induced spatial bias was most pronounced in left-handed participants but had the same sign in the right-handed group. Results suggest that egocentric midline shifts in healthy subjects induce a spatially-specific motor, but not a perceptual, bias and underline the importance of taking individual differences in functional laterality such as handedness and mode of perceptual report into account when evaluating effects of trunk rotation in either healthy subjects or neurological patients.

Defense of the brain time view

The brain time view and the time-marker view can be understood to rely upon the existence of a temporal judgment comparator that makes use of the temporal properties of neural activity caused by an external event. The main difference in these two views concerns the processing stage in which such comparison takes place and what the timing concerns about. The objections raised by Nishida and Johnston against the brain time view cannot settle the question of which theory is closer to the truth. However, Nishida and Johnston (2010, 286) are correct in their claim that the brain time view “assumes that a brain time mechanism is poorly designed in the sense that processing delay is added to event time estimation.” Then again, given the evidence that cortical processing influences temporal judgments (Arnold and Wilcock, 2007), and that Efron (1963) postulated his simultaneity center exactly because it could account for the processing delays between cortical hemispheres, the existence of such a poor mechanism could be closer to the truth than the mechanism postulated by the time-marker view.

Perception temporelle et schizophrénie : approche phénoménologique et neuropsychologique

Based on clinical, phenomenological and neurobiological observations, psychiatrists often report a deficit in time estimation in patients with schizophrenia. Cognitive models of time estimation in healthy subjects have been proposed and developed for approximately 30 years. The investigation of time perception is pertinent to the understanding of neurobiological and cognitive abnormalities in schizophrenia. Brain lesions and neuroimaging studies have shown that the critical brain structures engaged in time perception include the prefrontal and parietal lobes, thalamus, basal ganglia and cerebellum. These brain areas have been implicated in the physiopathology of schizophrenia in that there is impaired coordination of activity among these regions. Clinical and experimental date strongly suggest that patients with schizophrenia are less accurate in their ability to estimate time than healthy subjects. The specificity of these clinical and behavioral impairments is still in question. The aims of this article are to present an overview of the literature regarding time estimation and schizophrenia, to discuss specific issues related to how perceptual dysfunction in schizophrenia may lead to abnormalities in time perception, and to propose new perspectives towards an integrative approach between phenomenology and neuroscience. We present a review of the literature describing the current theory in the field of time perception, which is supported by a connectionist model, postulating that temporal judgment is based upon a pacemaker-counter device that depends mostly upon memory and attentional resources. The pacemaker emits pulses that are accumulated in a counter, and the number of pulses determines the perceived length of an interval. Patients with schizophrenia are known to display attentional and memory dysfunctions. Moreover, dopamine regulation mechanisms are involved in both the temporal perception and schizophrenia. It is still unclear if temporal impairments in schizophrenia are related to a specific disturbance in central temporal processes or are due to certain cognitive problems, such as attentional and memory dysfunctions, or biological abnormalities. While psychopathological and phenomenological work strongly suggests that time perception disturbance may be the key or core symptom in schizophrenia, neuroscience studies have failed to do the same. The question of specificity of temporal perception impairments in schizophrenia remains contested. Neuroscience studies suggest that time symptoms in patients with schizophrenia are only secondary to thought disorders and primary cognitive impairments. This debate refers to the etiologic/organic versus psychogenesis/psychological dichotomy and may be over-taken. Clinical evidence associated with psychopathological, biological and cognitive theories strongly suggests that patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in time perception. Discrimination and reproduction of durations have been found to be constantly impaired and disorganized. There is still much work to be done to identify the exact sources of variability in temporal judgments in schizophrenia, and the study of developmental course of time perception could be an interesting route. Regardless of the role of temporal deficits in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia (as a general cognitive disorder or a core role), clinical and phenomenological data encourage us to conduct further studies, especially in the field of developmental psychology.

Time Perception during Retrospective and Prospective Paradigms with a Distraction

Time duration estimates can play an intricate part of one’s daily life. This study examined the time duration judgments in two paradigms, when participants were aware they were being timed (prospective) and when they were unaware they were being timed (retrospective). Furthermore, this study investigated the effect of an external stimulus, when an auditory stimulus was used, to determine if an external stimulus might mediate any time distortions that occur in the two paradigms. For this between-subject, fully factorial experiment, 60 participants were engaged in a simulation and placed in one of four temporal judgment conditions. This study examined both the accuracy of the time duration judgment and the performance of the primary simulation task. The only significance finding for this study showed the importance of how a simple auditory distraction has the ability to increases the time duration judgments recalled after performing a task.

Editorial: Representational states in memory: where do we stand?

Editorial: Representational states in memory: where do we stand?

Effects of Emotional Facial Expression on Time Perception in Patients with Parkinson's Disease.

Previous studies have demonstrated that emotional facial expressions alter temporal judgments. Moreover, while some studies conducted with Parkinson's disease (PD) patients suggest dysfunction in the recognition of emotional facial expression, others have shown a dysfunction in time perception. In the present study, we investigate the magnitude of temporal distortions caused by the presentation of emotional facial expressions (anger, shame, and neutral) in PD patients and controls. Twenty-five older adults with PD and 17 healthy older adults took part in the present study. PD patients were divided into two sub-groups, with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI), based on their neuropsychological performance. Participants were tested with a time bisection task with standard intervals lasting 400 ms and 1600 ms. The effect of facial emotional stimuli on time perception was evident in all participants, yet the effect was greater for PD-MCI patients. Furthermore, PD-MCI patients were more likely to underestimate long and overestimate short temporal intervals than PD-non-MCI patients and controls. Temporal impairment in PD-MCI patients seem to be mainly caused by a memory dysfunction. (JINS, 2016, 22, 890-899).

Stimulus probability effects on temporal bisection performance of mice (Mus musculus).

In the temporal bisection task, participants classify experienced stimulus durations as short or long based on their temporal similarity to previously learned reference durations. Temporal decision making in this task should be influenced by the experienced probabilities of the reference durations for adaptiveness. In this study, we tested the temporal bisection performance of mice (Mus musculus) under different short and long reference duration probability conditions implemented across two experimental phases. In Phase 1, the proportion of reference durations (compared to probe durations) was 0.5, whereas in Phase 2 it was increased to 0.8 to further examine the adjustment of choice behavior with more frequent reference duration presentations (under higher reinforcement rate). Our findings suggest that mice developed adaptive biases in their choice behaviors. These adjustments in choice behavior were nearly optimal as the mice maximized their gain to a great extent which required them to monitor stimulus probabilities as well as the level of variability in their temporal judgments. We further found that short but not long categorization response times were sensitive to stimulus probability manipulations, which in turn suggests an asymmetry between short and long categorizations. Finally, we investigated the latent decision processes underlying the bias manifested in subjects' choice behavior within the diffusion model framework. Our results revealed that probabilistic information influenced the starting point and the rate of evidence accumulation process. Overall, the stimulus probability effects on choice behavior were modulated by the reinforcement rate. Our findings illustrate that mice can adapt their temporal behaviors with respect to the probabilistic contingencies in the environment.

Neuroelectromagnetic signatures of the reproduction of supra-second durations

When participants are asked to reproduce an earlier presented duration, EEG recordings typically show a slow potential that develops over the fronto-central regions of the brain and is assumed to be generated in the supplementary motor area (SMA). This contingent negative variation (CNV) has been linked to anticipation, preparation and formation of temporal judgment (Macar, Vidal, and Casini, 1999, Experimental Brain Research, 125(3), 271–80). Although the interpretation of the CNV amplitude is problematic (Kononowicz and Van Rijn, (2011), Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 5(48); Ng, Tobin, and Penney, 2011, Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 5(77)), the observation of this slow potential is extremely robust, and thus one could assume that magnetic recordings of brain activity should show similar activity patterns. However, interval timing studies using durations shorter than one second did not provide unequivocal evidence as to whether CNV has a magnetic counterpart (CMV). As interval timing has been typically associated with durations longer than one second, participants in this study were presented intervals of 2, 3 or 4s that had to be reproduced in setup similar to the seminal work of Elbert et al. (1991, Psychophysiology, 28(6), 648–55) while co-recording EEG and MEG.The EEG data showed a clear CNV during the standard and the reproduction interval. In the reproduction interval the CNV steadily builds up from the onset of interval for both stimulus and response locked data. The MEG data did not show a CNV-resembling ramping of activity, but only showed a pre-movement magnetic field (preMMF) that originated from the SMA, occurring approximately 0.6s before the termination of the timed interval. These findings support the notion that signatures of timing are more straightforwardly measured using EEG, and show that the measured MEG signal from the SMA is constrained to the end of reproduction interval, before the voluntary movement.Moreover, we investigated a link between timing behavior and the early iCNV and late CNV amplitudes to evaluate the hypothesis that these amplitudes reflect the accumulation of temporal pulses. Larger iCNV amplitudes predicted shorter reproduced durations. This effect was more pronounced for the 2s interval reproduction, suggesting that preparatory strategies depend on the length of reproduced interval. Similarly to Elbert et al. (1991, Psychophysiology, 28(6), 648–55), longer reproductions were associated with smaller CNV amplitudes, both between conditions and across participants within the same condition. As the temporal accumulation hypothesis predicts the inverse, these results support the proposal by Van Rijn et al. (2011, Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 5) that the CNV reflects other temporally driven processes such as temporal expectation and preparation rather than temporal accumulation itself.

Advances in modern mental chronometry.

Advances in modern mental chronometry.

The Effect of Immediate and Lifetime Experience of Reading Horizontal and Vertical Texts on Chinese Speakers’ Temporal Orientation

The present study examined participants’ performance on a temporal judgment task while holding language constant but varying their lifetime and immediate reading experience of horizontal and vertical texts. Chinese participants from Taiwan and China were randomly assigned to a reading task involving horizontally or vertically arranged texts. A temporal judgment task (spatial-temporal association of response codes or starc) followed the reading task, asking the participants to judge if the event depicted in a second picture occurred earlier or later than that in a first picture. Responses were faster when the left keys represented the ‘earlier’ responses than when the right keys did (a starc effect). Half of the participants responded with horizontally oriented keys while the rest with vertically oriented keys. For the Taiwan participants, the overall starc effect was greater when the response keys were vertical than horizontal, but no difference was observed for the China participants. A questionnaire indicates that the two groups of participants had similar lifetime experiences of reading horizontal texts, but the Taiwan participants read vertical texts in their life far more frequently than the China participants. Immediate reading experiences interacted with lifetime experiences in modulating the vertical bias. For the Taiwan participants, the vertical bias was strong following the vertical prime, but disappeared following the horizontal prime. For the China participants, the horizontal prime led to no vertical bias whereas the vertical prime brought about a horizontal bias. We conclude that the directionality of orthography and speakers’ immediate and lifetime reading experiences can better explain the vertical bias (or the lack of it) in the Chinese speakers’ temporal thinking. The findings, however, may be interpreted as constituting a different manifestation of linguistic relativity and recast under a broader framework of the extended-mind hypothesis of human cognition.

Alteration profile of executive functions in multiple sclerosis.

Executive functions (EF) in multiple sclerosis (MS) have been only partially studied, mainly trough the evaluation of subfunctions. The main objective was to analyse the EF alteration profile in a patients with MS sample. Case-control study, 100 patients with MS and 30 controls were evaluated by the following tests: Comprehensive Trail Making Test, Stroop Test, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, picture completion, letter-number sequencing, comprehension and similarities of the WAIS-III scale, phonological and semantic fluency, zoo map test, temporal judgment and behavioural Dysexecutive Questionnaire (DEX-Q) of the Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome. Scores below normative values were considered pathological. Factorial analysis was used to simplify the deficits, and multiple regression and ANOVA statistics were used to analyse the relationship between clinical and cognitive variables. Seventy-four patients had a recurrent-relapsing course, the mean degree of disability by Expanded disability Status Scale (EDSS) was 2.7 and the mean time of evolution was 9.94 years. Eighty-five per cent presented alterations in 3 or more EF tests and 71% in 5 or more. In the factorial analysis, three groups of functions were involved: (i) cognitive flexibility (ii) inhibition and (iii) abstraction ability. Patients with a progressive course and a high EDSS had a significantly worse performance (P < 0.05). The patients showed a low awareness of their deficit in the DEX-Q. Cognitive flexibility, inhibition and abstraction ability were the three components of EF most deficient. The patients with the worst performance were those with progressive forms and a high EDSS.

Optimal time discrimination.

In the temporal bisection task, participants categorize experienced stimulus durations as short or long based on their similarity to previously acquired reference durations. Reward maximization in this task requires integrating endogenous timing uncertainty as well as exogenous probabilities of the reference durations into temporal judgements. We tested human participants on the temporal bisection task with different short and long reference duration probabilities (exogenous probability) in two separate test sessions. Incorrect categorizations were not penalized in Experiment 1 but were penalized in Experiment 2, leading to different levels of stringency in the reward functions that participants tried to maximize. We evaluated the judgements within the framework of optimality. Our participants adapted their choice behaviour in a nearly optimal fashion and earned nearly the maximum possible expected gain they could attain given their level of endogenous timing uncertainty and exogenous probabilities in both experiments. These results point to the optimality of human temporal risk assessment in the temporal bisection task. The long categorization response times (RTs) were overall faster than short categorization RTs, and short but not long categorization RTs were modulated by reference duration probability manipulations. These observations suggested an asymmetry between short and long categorizations in the temporal bisection task.

A model-based comparison of three theories of audiovisual temporal recalibration

Event Abstract Back to Event A model-based comparison of three theories of audiovisual temporal recalibration Kielan Yarrow1* and Shora Minaei1 1 City University London, Psychology, U.K. When exposed to a series of asynchronous adaptors (for example audiovisual events) observers' temporal judgements have been shown to recalibrate. The mechanism of this recalibration is currently debated. Three broad explanations have been suggested. According to the first, the time it takes for sensory signals to propagate through the brain has changed, affecting the relative headstart of one modality compared to the other/s. The second explanation suggests that the decision criteria we use to interpret relative time have changed, but not the perception of time itself. A final possibility is that a population of neurones collectively encode relative times, and that the balance of responses in this population has been changed (without any concurrent change in the way the population is being decoded to produce a decision). Here, we tested four adaptation conditions: No adaptation, synchronous adaptation, and negative/positive adaptation at the low/high decision criteria for simultaneity respectively. These conditions were selected because the three explanations for recalibration generate contrasting patterns of predictions about how simultaneity judgements should vary across them. We simplified each explanation to its core features in order to produce three corresponding six-parameter models, one per explanation, which were then fitted to all four conditions at once in order to assess goodness of fit. Our data suggest that, considered in isolation, the time shift and criterion shift accounts are better able to explain subjective reports about simultaneity than the population code model. Keywords: adaptation, audiovisual, temporal recalibration, synchrony, SJ Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Sensation and Perception Citation: Yarrow K and Minaei S (2015). A model-based comparison of three theories of audiovisual temporal recalibration. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00390 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Kielan Yarrow, City University London, Psychology, London, U.K., kielan.yarrow.1@city.ac.uk Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Kielan Yarrow Shora Minaei Google Kielan Yarrow Shora Minaei Google Scholar Kielan Yarrow Shora Minaei PubMed Kielan Yarrow Shora Minaei Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Biasing Temporal Judgments in Rats, Pigeons, and Humans

Models of interval timing typically include a response threshold to account for temporal production. The present study sought to evaluate the dependent concurrent fixed-interval fixed-interval schedule of reinforcement as a tool for selectively isolating the response threshold in rats, pigeons, and humans. In this task, reinforcement is available either at one location after a short delay or at another location at a longer delay. Because the reinforced location is not signaled, subjects normally respond on the first location and, if reinforcement is not delivered, then switch to the second location. The latency to switch between locations served as the primary dependent measure. After training rats, pigeons, and humans with equal reinforcement magnitudes in the short and long delays, the magnitude of reinforcement was increased threefold on the long-delay location. Consistent with model predictions, this biasing procedure decreased estimates of the response threshold of rats and pigeons, but also reduced temporal control in these species and increased response-threshold estimates in humans. Human and pigeon performance also suggested a magnitude-induced increase in the speed of the internal clock. Collectively, these results suggest that differences in reinforcement magnitude between response alternatives appear to modulate the response threshold, but not selectively, and may provide guidance for better isolating response-threshold effects in humans.

Multimodal Integration of Time

Recent studies suggest that the accuracy of duration discrimination for visually presented intervals is strongly impaired by concurrently presented auditory intervals of different duration, but not vice versa. Because these studies rely mostly on accuracy measures, it remains unclear whether this impairment results from changes in perceived duration or rather from a decrease in perceptual sensitivity. We therefore assessed complete psychometric functions in a duration discrimination task to disentangle effects on perceived duration and sensitivity. Specifically, participants compared two empty intervals marked by either visual or auditory pulses. These pulses were either presented unimodally, or accompanied by task-irrelevant pulses in the respective other modality, which defined conflicting intervals of identical, shorter, or longer duration. Participants were instructed to base their temporal judgments solely on the task-relevant modality. Despite this instruction, perceived duration was clearly biased toward the duration of the intervals marked in the task-irrelevant modality. This was not only found for the discrimination of visual intervals, but also, to a lesser extent, for the discrimination of auditory intervals. Discrimination sensitivity, however, was similar between all multimodal conditions, and only improved compared to the presentation of unimodal visual intervals. In a second experiment, evidence for multisensory integration was even found when the task-irrelevant modality did not contain any duration information, thus excluding noncompliant attention allocation as a basis of our results. Our results thus suggest that audiovisual integration of temporally discrepant signals does not impair discrimination sensitivity but rather alters perceived duration, presumably by means of a temporal ventriloquism effect.