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

Abstract

Time perception is involved in various cognitive functions. This study investigated the characteristics of short-term memory for event duration by examining how the length of the retention period affects interand intramodal duration judgment. On each trial, a sample stimulus was followed by a comparison stimulus, after a variable delay period (0.5-5 s). The sample and comparison stimuli were presented in the visual or auditory modality. The participants determined whether the comparison stimulus was longer or shorter than the sample stimulus. The distortion pattern of subjective duration during the delay period depended on the sensory modality of the comparison stimulus but was not affected by that of the sample stimulus. When the comparison stimulus was visually presented, the retained duration of the sample stimulus was shortened as the delay period increased. Contrarily, when the comparison stimulus was presented in the auditory modality, the delay period had little to no effect on the retained duration. Furthermore, whenever the participants did not know the sensory modality of the comparison stimulus beforehand, the effect of the delay period disappeared. These results suggest that the memory process for event duration is specific to sensory modality and that its performance is determined depending on the sensory modality in which the retained duration will be used subsequently.

Reducing Bias in Auditory Duration Reproduction by Integrating the Reproduced Signal

“…Our finding of a large difference between perceptual comparison and motor reproduction for the same physical duration clearly favors distributed timing mechanisms [38]–[42]. It is well established that perceived duration in different modalities can vary, such that sounds are perceived as longer than lights or tactile vibrations of equal physical duration [7]–[9], [43]–[45].…”

How are overlapping time intervals perceived? Evidence for a weighted sum of segments model

“…The present data are clearly not consistent with such a strict version of cross-modal encoding, which would predict similar result patterns across all experiments irrespective of input modalities and presentation order. However, it has also been suggested that whether or not such cross-modal encoding occurs might depend on the timing context (Takahashi & Watanabe, 2012). Thus, the likelihood of cross-modal encoding occurring during timing of overlapping intervals in a bimodal context (as in Experiment 2) may depend on, for instance, the order in which the different stimuli are presented and the durations of the to-be-timed intervals or segments.…”

The Psychology of Time Perception

“…Although found subjective shortening across all stimulus types, and Wearden and Ferrara's initial (1993) demonstration used tones, a more recent paper by Takahashi and Watanabe (2012), which used a technique just slightly different from that of Wearden and Ferrara, was not able to obtain subjective shortening effects when the sample and comparison stimuli were auditory, although the effect was present with visual stimuli. In other experiments, the sample and comparison stimuli were of different modalities, either visual or auditory.…”