Humans don’t time subsecond intervals like a stopwatch.

Narkiewicz, M.; Lambrechts, Anna; Eichelbaum, Frederik; Yarrow, Kielan

doi:10.1037/a0038284

Cited by 4 publications

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References 57 publications

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“…The question whether subjects time individual intervals or total duration has been addressed before in humans (Hinton and Rao, 2004; Hinton et al, 2004; Laje et al, 2011; Narkiewicz et al, 2015). Buonomano and colleagues used a spatiotemporal task in which subjects had to perform a series of button presses with an elaborated spatial and temporal structure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By plotting Std as a function of Go-time, this trend can be observed as a saturating effect at large Go-time s (Figure 3A, right panel). Whether subjects time individual intervals separately, or they time total elapsed time is an important question in timing research (Hinton and Rao, 2004; Hinton et al, 2004; Laje et al, 2011; Narkiewicz et al, 2015). We found that the continuous (Equation 1) and reset (Equation 3) models provided statistically similar fits to our data ( p = 0.13, paired t -test on the Fisher-transformed correlation coefficients between behavioral data and model estimates, t (24) = −1.6; Laje et al, 2011; Figure 3A).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Monkeys Share the Human Ability to Internally Maintain a Temporal Rhythm

et al. 2016

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Timing is a fundamental variable for behavior. However, the mechanisms allowing human and non-human primates to synchronize their actions with periodic events are not yet completely understood. Here we characterize the ability of rhesus monkeys and humans to perceive and maintain rhythms of different paces in the absence of sensory cues or motor actions. In our rhythm task subjects had to observe and then internally follow a visual stimulus that periodically changed its location along a circular perimeter. Crucially, they had to maintain this visuospatial tempo in the absence of movements. Our results show that the probability of remaining in synchrony with the rhythm decreased, and the variability in the timing estimates increased, as a function of elapsed time, and these trends were well described by the generalized law of Weber. Additionally, the pattern of errors shows that human subjects tended to lag behind fast rhythms and to get ahead of slow ones, suggesting that a mean tempo might be incorporated as prior information. Overall, our results demonstrate that rhythm perception and maintenance are cognitive abilities that we share with rhesus monkeys, and these abilities do not depend on overt motor commands.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monkeys Share the Human Ability to Internally Maintain a Temporal Rhythm

et al. 2016

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“…More generally, our current findings favouring sense-specific clocks form part of a wider body of evidence that speaks against single amodal internal stopwatch accounts, like scalar expectancy theory, which can be criticised on both theoretical grounds (e.g. this model achieves scalar timing via an ad hoc multiplicative constant, rather than by any feature of its basic architecture; see Staddon & Higa, 2006) and on empirical considerations (including that humans do not appear able to stop and restart their timer at will, as this model suggests, without suffering large drops in precision; Narkiewicz et al, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This allowed us to apply a slope analysis method (Ivry & Hazeltine, 1995;Narkiewicz, Lambrechts, Eichelbaum, & Yarrow, 2015) in order to decompose judgment variability into a component contributed by non-scalar operations (including starting and stopping the clock) and a scalar component that grows with the duration being timed (reflecting counter and/or memory processes). With separate estimates, we were able to make predictions regarding the integration of one but not both sources of noise.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Weighted integration suggests that visual and tactile signals provide independent estimates about duration.

Ball

Arnold

Yarrow

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Copyright and reuse: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ publications@city.ac.uk Permanent repository link: City Research OnlineThe APA has copyright on this article. When published, it can be found at: improvements can be predicted quantitatively, assuming estimates are combined by summation, a process described as optimal when summation is weighted in accordance with the variance associated with each of the initially independent estimates. We assessed this possibility for visual and tactile information regarding temporal intervals. In Experiment 1, 12 musicians and 12 nonmusicians judged durations of 300 and 600 ms, compared to test values spanning these standards.Bimodal precision increased relative to unimodal conditions, but not by the extent predicted by optimally weighted summation. In Experiment 2, six musicians and six other participants each judged six standards, ranging from 100 ms to 600 ms, with conflicting cues providing a measure of the weight assigned to each sensory modality. A weighted integration model best fitted these data, with musicians more likely to select near-optimal weights than non-musicians. Overall, data were consistent with the existence of separate visual and tactile clock components at either the counter/integrator or memory stages. Independent estimates are passed to a decisional process, but not always combined in a statistically optimal fashion. Statement of public significanceWe are able to judge the duration of events as they unfold (e.g. the time for which somebody holds our gaze). Sometimes, this information is conveyed to several of our senses at once (e.g. both seeing and feeling the duration of a caress). Theorists argue about whether time intervals are calculated separately for each sense, or rely on a common centralised timer. This study suggests that when people experience the duration of events via both vision and touch, they gain a multisensory benefit, performing better than when they receive just visual or just tactile stimulation.This kind of benefit can only accrue if time is first estimated independently within each sense, suggesting that separate timers exist.Humans and other animals express their ability to time intervals through a wide variety of behaviours. In the lab, this ability is often assessed by requiring experimental participants to make judgments about the duration of events. However, our knowledge regarding the neurocognitive bases of these judgments remains hazy. One debate concerns the centralised versus distributed nature of the hypothetical internal clock or clocks (Ivry & Schlerf, 2008;Ivry & Spencer, 2004 Revina, Bruno, & Johnston, 2012;and Morgan...

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“…To simulate PSE values from the non-linear clock model, the physical duration T 1 that is needed for an interval to be perceived of equal duration as another interval T 2 can be expressed by Where ψ represents the psychometric function that relates physical to perceived duration. The non-linear clock model assumes that: (1) the clock is reset at every filler tone demarcating the beginning of a new subinterval [ 22 ], (2) the complete interval duration is obtained by summing up the perceived durations of the subintervals D , that is , and (3) the relationship between the physical and the perceived duration of the subintervals is logarithmic [ 3 , 7 ] ψ ′( D ) = log( D ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timing Rhythms: Perceived Duration Increases with a Predictable Temporal Structure of Short Interval Fillers

Horr

Luca

2015

PLoS ONE

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Variations in the temporal structure of an interval can lead to remarkable differences in perceived duration. For example, it has previously been shown that isochronous intervals, that is, intervals filled with temporally regular stimuli, are perceived to last longer than intervals left empty or filled with randomly timed stimuli. Characterizing the extent of such distortions is crucial to understanding how duration perception works. One account to explain effects of temporal structure is a non-linear accumulator-counter mechanism reset at the beginning of every subinterval. An alternative explanation based on entrainment to regular stimulation posits that the neural response to each filler stimulus in an isochronous sequence is amplified and a higher neural response may lead to an overestimation of duration. If entrainment is the key that generates response amplification and the distortions in perceived duration, then any form of predictability in the temporal structure of interval fillers should lead to the perception of an interval that lasts longer than a randomly filled one. The present experiments confirm that intervals filled with fully predictable rhythmically grouped stimuli lead to longer perceived duration than anisochronous intervals. No general over- or underestimation is registered for rhythmically grouped compared to isochronous intervals. However, we find that the number of stimuli in each group composing the rhythm also influences perceived duration. Implications of these findings for a non-linear clock model as well as a neural response magnitude account of perceived duration are discussed.

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Humans don’t time subsecond intervals like a stopwatch.

Cited by 4 publications

References 57 publications

Monkeys Share the Human Ability to Internally Maintain a Temporal Rhythm

Monkeys Share the Human Ability to Internally Maintain a Temporal Rhythm

Weighted integration suggests that visual and tactile signals provide independent estimates about duration.

Timing Rhythms: Perceived Duration Increases with a Predictable Temporal Structure of Short Interval Fillers

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