The present study investigated modality-specific differences in processing of temporal information in the subsecond range. For this purpose, participants performed auditory and visual versions of a rhythm perception and three different duration discrimination tasks to allow for a direct, systematic comparison across both sensory modalities. Our findings clearly indicate higher temporal sensitivity in the auditory than in the visual domain irrespective of type of timing task. To further evaluate whether there is evidence for a common modality-independent timing mechanism or for multiple modality-specific mechanisms, we used structural equation modeling to test three different theoretical models. Neither a single modality-independent timing mechanism, nor two independent modality-specific timing mechanisms fitted the empirical data. Rather, the data are well described by a hierarchical model with modality-specific visual and auditory temporal processing at a first level and a modality-independent processing system at a second level of the hierarchy.

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According to previous studies there is a well-established functional relationship between temporal resolution power (TRP), assessed by auditory psychophysical timing tasks, and psychometric intelligence. Here we investigated whether the relationship between psychometric intelligence and temporal information processing can be also observed in the visual modality. For this purpose, performance on four visual psychophysical timing tasks (duration discrimination with filled and empty intervals, temporal generalization, and rhythm perception) was examined and related to performance on a psychometric test of intelligence. Correlational analyses indicated a reliable positive association between performance on each of the four temporal tasks and psychometric intelligence. Structural equation modeling suggested that performance on the four tasks can be assigned to one latent variable, referred to as TRP, which explained 16.5% of variance of psychometric intelligence. Findings indicate that the functional relationship previously observed between auditory temporal processing and psychometric intelligence can be generalized to the visual modality.

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