The parallel-clock model: Replies to critics and criticisms

Composition rule for perceived duration of simultaneous events

“…Apparently, these are robust effects that reflect differences in the requirements of the two tasks, parallel processing of temporal information in the latter instance and sequential processing in the former. They conflict with Eisler's (1981) suggestion that the nonlinearity of the judgments of simultaneous intervals was attributable to the requirement that a currently monitored (longer) duration be compared with a remembered (shorter) duration. The nonlinearity holds when the two intervals terminate simultaneously as well as when they terminate asynchronously.…”

“…The subject needed to compare the contents of the register monitoring the longer interval with a representation of duration stored in memory. Eisler (1981) also suggested that a modification in the experimental procedure that we used would make the experiment more relevant to the question at issue. The suggestion was to employ a common offset in the simultaneous conditions such that the two intervals started asynchronously and terminated simultaneously.…”

“…The simultaneous condition differed from that in our previous studies in that the intervals of the pair shared a common offset rather than a common onset, a modification suggested by Eisler, who hypothesized that our previous finding may have been due to an offset asynchrony. Results were consistent with a nonlinear composition rule for describing parallel monitoring of temporal information of simultaneous events and a linear rule for monitoring duration of successive events.The research to be reported follows from research we have conducted previously which deals with the perceived duration of simultaneous events (Curtis & Rule, 1977) and from a modification of those experiments suggested by Eisler (1981). In the Curtis and Rule studies, subjects rated pairs of temporal intervals with respect to their average duration, their total (summed) duration, or their difference ,--'----, tion when the intervals making up the pairs, / sented either simultaneously or successiveiy.…”

“…The research to be reported follows from research we have conducted previously which deals with the perceived duration of simultaneous events (Curtis & Rule, 1977) and from a modification of those experiments suggested by Eisler (1981). In the Curtis and Rule studies, subjects rated pairs of temporal intervals with respect to their average duration, their total (summed) duration, or their difference ,--'----, tion when the intervals making up the pairs, / sented either simultaneously or successiveiy.…”

“…We argued that if one assumes that the evaluation of a pair of intervals is based on simultaneous monitoring regardless of whether the intervals are sequential or simultaneous, different composition rules would not be expected to apply to sequential and simultaneous presentationslinear for one and nonlinear for the other. Eisler (1981) has questioned the relevance of our simultaneous condition to his parallel-clock model on the grounds that, because the two intervals shared a common onset, the two clocks would not continuously monitor the intervals throughout the presentationsequence. Because the shorter interval terminated before the longer interval, the register associated with the shorter interval would not have continued to be active until the time that a response …”