What Happens in a Moment

Abstract

There has been evidence for the very brief, temporal quantization of perceptual experience at regular intervals below 100 ms for several decades. We briefly describe how earlier studies led to the concept of “psychological moment” of between 50 and 60 ms duration. According to historical theories, within the psychological moment all events would be processed as co-temporal. More recently, a link with physiological mechanisms has been proposed, according to which the 50–60 ms psychological moment would be defined by the upper limit required by neural mechanisms to synchronize and thereby represent a snapshot of current perceptual event structure. However, our own experimental developments also identify a more fine-scaled, serialized process structure within the psychological moment. Our data suggests that not all events are processed as co-temporal within the psychological moment and instead, some are processed successively. This evidence questions the analog relationship between synchronized process and simultaneous experience and opens debate on the ontology and function of “moments” in psychological experience.

The phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience of experienced temporality

“…300 ms are subjects able to sequentially distinguish and temporally control each individual finger tap (Peters 1989, Wittmann et al 2001). These and many other studies show how sequentially evolving events are temporally integrated in discrete windows or processing cycles (for overviews, see Elliott and Giersch 2016, Pöppel 1997, van Wassenhove 2009, Wittmann 2011. Overall, temporal integration of stimuli with sub-second duration happens over several different time It is on the time scale of around 300 ms that Dainton (2008) identifies the duration of the extensional present: "Tap a table with your fingers, at regular intervals of about a second;…”

“…Related conceptualizations have focused on temporal integration mechanisms that are bound to neural system states defining a 'perceptual moment' (e.g. Elliott and Giersch 2016, Pöppel 1997, Stroud 1955, White 2018.…”

“…Recent empirical evidence suggests that visual temporal-order processing may also happen on an unconscious level below the temporal-order threshold; that is, on an implicit behavioral level one can show how temporal-order information is processed albeit not consciously detected(Elliott & Giersch 2016). Importantly, this unconscious coding of temporal ordering has been discussed as creating the feeling of the continuous passage of time(Herzog et al 2016).…”

Is conscious perception a series of discrete temporal frames?

“…The idea that conscious percepts fall into discrete temporal frames has a long history: something like it appeared over 2,000 years ago in Buddhist thinking (Herzog, Kammer, & Scharnowski, 2016;Pockett et al, 2011). In more recent scientific work it may date back to von Baer (1862) 2 , although the original presentation does not survive and there is uncertainty about its content (Elliott & Giersch, 2016). Elliott and Giersch (2016) stated that von Baer had proposed "a fundamental quantum of experienced time" (Elliott & Giersch, 2016, p. 1) with a duration of about 55 ms.…”

“…In more recent scientific work it may date back to von Baer (1862) 2 , although the original presentation does not survive and there is uncertainty about its content (Elliott & Giersch, 2016). Elliott and Giersch (2016) stated that von Baer had proposed "a fundamental quantum of experienced time" (Elliott & Giersch, 2016, p. 1) with a duration of about 55 ms. This is consistent with research by Brecher (1932) showing a nonsimultaneity threshold of about 55 ms with both tactile and visual stimuli although, as we shall see, more recent research has shown a wide range of nonsimultaneity thresholds and Brecher's results can no longer be regarded as definitive in that respect.…”