Neural-latency noise places limits on human sensitivity to the timing of events

Yarrow, Kielan; Kohl, Carmen; Segasby, Toby; Bansal, Rachel Kaur; Rowe, Paula; Arnold, Derek H.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.105012

Cited by 10 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…The most successful of our models, AT-A-GLANCE, has much in common with the second most successful, ELA (García-Pérez & Alcalá-Quintana, 2012a). Both posit signals propagating through the brain toward a decision center and accumulating latency noise in the process, an idea that has received recent support based on an analysis of SJs alongside recordings of electroencephalography (Yarrow et al, 2022). Furthermore, both posit that judgments of simultaneity arise when the subjective difference in arrival times at this decision center falls within a limited window.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The best fitting of three contemporary observer models reveals how participants’ strategy influences the window of subjective synchrony.

Yarrow,

Solomon,

Arnold

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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When experimenters vary the timing between two intersensory events, and participants judge their simultaneity, an inverse-U-shaped psychometric function is obtained. Typically, this simultaneity function is first fitted with a model for each participant separately, before best-fitting parameters are utilized (e.g., compared across conditions) in the second stage of a two-step inferential procedure. Often, simultaneity-function width is interpreted as representing sensitivity to asynchrony, and/or ascribed theoretical equivalence to a window of multisensory temporal binding. Here, we instead fit a single (principled) multilevel model to data from the entire group and across several conditions at once. By asking 20 participants to sometimes be more conservative in their judgments, we demonstrate how the width of the simultaneity function is prone to strategic change and thus questionable as a measure of either sensitivity to asynchrony or multisensory binding. By repeating our analysis with three different models (two implying a decision based directly on subjective asynchrony, and a third deriving this decision from the correlation between filtered responses to sensory inputs) we find that the first model, which hypothesizes, in particular, Gaussian latency noise and difficulty maintaining the stability of decision criteria across trials, is most plausible for these data. Public Significance StatementPsychologists have made their competing theories about how humans are able to perceive the relative timing of events concrete by formulating mathematical models that attempt to describe behavior in specific experimental tasks. Here, we focus on one such task and show that people's reports about simultaneity are inherently subjective, as implied by several current models. We also find that the bestperforming of these models explains inconsistencies when responding repeatedly to objectively identical pairs of events by positing inconsistencies in both the time it takes for neural messages to propagate through the brain and how those messages are then interpreted to form a decision.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The best fitting of three contemporary observer models reveals how participants’ strategy influences the window of subjective synchrony.

Yarrow,

Solomon,

Arnold

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The most successful of our models, AT-A-GLANCE, has much in common with the second most successful, ELA (García-Pérez & Alcalá-Quintana, 2012). Both posit signals propagating toward a decision centre and accumulating latency noise in the process, an idea that has received recent support based on an analysis of SJs alongside recordings of EEG (Yarrow et al, 2022). Furthermore, both posit that judgements of simultaneity arise when the subjective difference in arrival times at this decision centre falls within a limited window.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…above -100ms and below 100 ms). One of the central notions behind this class of model (that decision noise reflects latency noise) has recently received support via the recording of SJs alongside concurrent electroencephalography (Yarrow et al, 2022).…”

Section: Observer Models Of the Sj Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilevel modelling of simultaneity judgements discriminates between observer models and reveals how participants’ strategy influences the window of subjective synchrony

Yarrow¹,

Solomon²,

Arnold³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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When experimenters vary the timing between two intersensory events, and participants judge their simultaneity, a non-standard (i.e. non-sigmoidal, non-monotonic) psychometric function is obtained. Typically, this function is first characterised (i.e. fitted with a model) for each participant separately, before parameters that maximise the likelihood of the model are utilised (e.g. compared across conditions) in the second stage of a two-step inferential procedure. Often, the width of the psychometric function is interpreted as representing sensitivity to asynchrony, and/or ascribed theoretical equivalence to a window of multisensory temporal binding. Here, we adopt an alternative inferential approach in which a single (principled) Bayesian multilevel model is fitted to data from the entire group and across several conditions at once. In a simple experiment in which 19 participants were sometimes asked to be more conservative in their simultaneity judgements, we demonstrate how the width of the simultaneity function is prone to strategic change and thus questionable as a measure of either sensitivity or multisensory binding. By repeating our analysis with three different recently advocated models (two that imply a decision based on subjective asynchrony, and one that generates changes in perceived synchrony from the correlation between filtered responses to sensory inputs) we provide templates for a range of alternatives within the Bayesian multilevel framework, and find that one of the three models, which hypothesises Gaussian latency noise and difficulty maintaining the stability of decision criteria across trials, provides the most plausible account for this data set.

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“…We calculated the proportion of simultaneous responses for each SOA condition under the two adaptation conditions for each participant. Then, the data were fitted by maximum-likelihood estimation with a model constructed from the differences in two cumulative Gaussians using MATLAB (MathWorks, Inc) such that it was appropriate for fitting data from simultaneity judgment (SJ) tasks 31 – 34 …”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We estimated the deviance for each model fit and retained participants only when the difference in deviance from a two-parameter model to a four-parameter model in each of the two conditions was significantly greater than the critical values for the chi-square distribution with 2 degrees of freedom 31 , 34 . Based on this criterion, none of the participants were excluded.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-modal correspondence between auditory pitch and visual elevation modulates audiovisual temporal recalibration

Uno

Yokosawa

2022

Sci Rep

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Cross-modal correspondences refer to associations between feature dimensions of stimuli across sensory modalities. Research has indicated that correspondence between audiovisual stimuli influences whether these stimuli are integrated or segregated. On the other hand, the audiovisual integration process plastically changes to compensate for continuously observed spatiotemporal conflicts between sensory modalities. If and how cross-modal correspondence modulates the “recalibration” of integration is unclear. We investigated whether cross-modal correspondence between auditory pitch and visual elevation affected audiovisual temporal recalibration. Participants judged the simultaneity of a pair of audiovisual stimuli after an adaptation phase in which alternating auditory and visual stimuli equally spaced in time were presented. In the adaptation phase, auditory pitch and visual elevation were manipulated to fix the order within each pairing of audiovisual stimuli congruent with pitch-elevation correspondence (visual leading or auditory leading). We found a shift in the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) between congruent audiovisual stimuli as a function of the adaptation conditions (Experiment 1, 2), but this shift in the PSS was not observed within incongruent pairs (Experiment 2). These results indicate that asynchronies between audiovisual signals congruent with cross-modal correspondence are selectively recalibrated.

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Neural-latency noise places limits on human sensitivity to the timing of events

Cited by 10 publications

References 48 publications

The best fitting of three contemporary observer models reveals how participants’ strategy influences the window of subjective synchrony.

The best fitting of three contemporary observer models reveals how participants’ strategy influences the window of subjective synchrony.

Multilevel modelling of simultaneity judgements discriminates between observer models and reveals how participants’ strategy influences the window of subjective synchrony

Cross-modal correspondence between auditory pitch and visual elevation modulates audiovisual temporal recalibration

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