Sensory‐specific clock components and memory mechanisms: investigation with parallel timing

Abstract

A challenge for researchers in the time-perception field is to determine whether temporal processing is governed by a central mechanism or by multiple mechanisms working in concert. Behavioral studies of parallel timing offer interesting insights into the question, although the conclusions fail to converge. Most of these studies focus on the number-of-clocks issue, but the commonality of memory mechanisms involved in time processing is often neglected. The present experiment aims to address a straightforward question: do signals from different modalities marking time intervals share the same clock and/or the same memory resources? To this end, an interval reproduction task involving the parallel timing of two sensory signals presented either in the same modality or in different modalities was conducted. The memory component was tested by manipulating the delay separating the presentation of the target intervals and the moment when the reproduction of one of these began. Results show that there is more variance when only visually marked intervals are presented, and this effect is exacerbated with longer retention delays. Finally, when there is only one interval to process, encoding the interval with signals delivered from two modalities helps to reduce variance. Taken together, these results suggest that the hypothesis stating that there are sensory-specific clock components and memory mechanisms is viable.

Duration perception in crossmodally-defined intervals

“…Other studies investigating duration judgments with multisensory stimuli reported results that imply multiple modality-specific timing mechanisms when processing sub-second durations (Gamache & Grondin, 2010;Grondin & Rousseau, 1991). The diverging results of previous work and the present study might originate from the different paradigms used.…”

“…It is well established that multiple clocks underlie time keeping at different time scales (see Buhusi & Meck, 2009, for example) and that even for sub-second intervals not all time perception phenomena can be explained by a single internal clock (Gamache & Grondin, 2010;Ulrich et al, 2006). The current study, however, shows that for empty crossmodal intervals in the milliseconds-to-second range that are compared to a filled interval, the human time-keeping system relies on a mechanism leading to consistent distortions across sensory modalities.…”

“…For different time scales, for example, such as milliseconds, seconds to hours, or circadian cycles, previous research suggests that several internal clocks exist that differ from each other in their timekeeping properties (see Buhusi & Meck, 2009;Ivry & Schlerf, 2008). Whether even more specialized time-keeping mechanisms such as modality specific mechanisms, for example, exist is still under debate (e.g., Gamache & Grondin, 2010;Ulrich, Nitschke, & Rammsayer, 2006). In everyday life, time-keeping tasks can involve simultaneity or duration judgments of signals of multiple sensory modalities.…”

Humans don’t time subsecond intervals like a stopwatch.

“…Because a potential source of variability in interval judgements can be attributed to memory, with noise potentially accumulating across the period for which an interval estimate must be maintained (e.g. Gamache & Grondin, 2010), in group B the overall trial duration was held constant, achieved by inserting a long (2000 ms) pause between the standard and the first target component when the gap between the two target components was short (500 ms), and a shorter (1000 ms) pause when the gap was long (1500 ms; see Figure 1d). In both groups, the order of the three blocks (single interval, split interval -short pause, split intervallong pause) was counterbalanced across participants.…”

Short-term memory for event duration: Modality specificity and goal dependency

“…Recently, however, an increasing number of studies have suggested an interest in an underlying memory component for event duration (Droit-Volet, Wearden, & Delgado-Yonger, 2007;Grondin, 2005;Nobre & O'Reilly, 2004). At the center of that interest is, as with the encoding and measuring process, whether memory vis-à-vis stimulus duration is specific to sensory modality or whether each modality uses a common memory system (Gamache & Grondin, 2010a, 2010bOgden, Wearden, & Jones, 2010;Penney, Gibbon, & Meck, 2000;Rattat & Picard, 2012). For example, Gamache and Grondin (2010b) showed that the accuracy of reproduction performance with regard to visual and auditory stimulus duration varied as the delay period between stimulus and reproduction increased.…”