An Adaptive Counter Model for Time Estimation

Rousseau, Robert; Picard, Daniel; Pitre, Edgard

doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1984.tb23480.x

Cited by 34 publications

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“…of judgments to " clock that would follow some form of Weber's law (Getty, 1975;Treisrnan, 1963) or to a clockcounter device in which it is assumed that the counting component is without error and that the clock has properties of a Poisson system (Creelman, 1962;Rousseau, Picard, & Pitre, 1984). On the other hand, Kristofferson (1977) has developed a model in which it is assumed that the clock is not a source of error.…”

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confidence: 99%

Production of time intervals from segmented and nonsegmented inputs

Grondin

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

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One important factor influencing the accuracy of a timing estimate is the counting activity that a human subject may adopt. In the present study, the usefulness of this activity is evaluated with a strategy whereby subjects are presented segmented and nonsegmented intervals, before they start to produce a series of these intervals, using a finger-tapping procedure. The results are mainly analyzed in the light of Killeen and Weiss's (1987) model, which addressed this question of counting. The results revealed that (1) a scalar property gives a better description of the pacemaker activity than does a Poisson process, and (2) an optimal timing performance would be reached with the utilization of subintervals with an approximate val ue of 400 msec. Finally, the discussion also incorporates an analysis of the variability related to the motor component in a tapping task. and The total variance is then a combination of errors coming from the weighted sum of two sources, U6 and ukThe growth of these variances is assumed to correspond to these equations: (4) Killeen and Weiss referred to Equations 3 and 4 as the fundamental error equations.In spite of the relevance of the question, the literature has reported very little empirical evidence that permits the evaluation of the effect of explicit counting or the benefits of a segmentation strategy when one is estimating time (Getty, 1976;Gilliland & Martin, 1940;Hicks & Allen, 1979;Petrusic, 1984). A recent series of investigations by Fetterman and Killeen (1990) provides more information about the optimal tradeoff between n and d when one is estimating t. In their experiments, they asked the subjects to reproduce intervals after having been presented tone durations. These reproductions of intervals involved a series of taps on a key until the target duration was reached; the number of responses (n), the duration between successive taps (d), and the total duration of their reproductions (t) were recorded. They mainly reported that although the rate of responding-that is, the length of d-differed considerably between subjects, it remained approximately the same for one given subject for different values of t; the variability in counting (n) was mainly responsible for explaining the total variability of estimates; there were less counting errors when subjects used explicit counting; and the variability increased when subjects were asked to deviate from their preferred rates of responding.The series of experiments by Fetterman and Killeen (1990) was a major attempt to test Killeen and Weiss's (1987) analysis, but some important questions remained open or have arisen following these experiments. One question regards the optimal tradeoff between n and d for getting the best timing performance. Another key question still requiring experimental work concerns the properties of emission of pulses by the pacemaker in a pacemaker-counter (or clock-counter) system. Indeed, most models of time estimation attribute the variability (3) (1) (2) t = 00, and Most people who are required to...

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confidence: 99%

Production of time intervals from segmented and nonsegmented inputs

Grondin

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…In the Rousseau et al (1984) model, gating is assumed to be an all-or-none process, such that accumulation of ternporal information is completely interrupted by concurrent cognitive processing. Consequently, a one-to-one relationship between cognitive-processing duration and the increase in temporal production was hypothesized.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…proposed by Rousseau et al (1984) suggests a systematic approach to the problem. The model proposes that subjects produce an interval by accumulating, after the first tap, a criterion number of pulses emitted by an internal source.…”

Section: Experiments 2 Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Assuming that MS and interval production interact according to a kind of preemptive timesharing (Schweickert & Boggs, 1984) as described by the Rousseau et al (1984) model, interruption in the timing process by concurrent MS should cause a lengthening in the produced interval that is proportional to the number of mental operations performed in the search and equal to their total duration.…”

Section: Experiments 2 Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An interval scale of brightness for the pigeon

Schneider

1987

Perception & Psychophysics

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Pigeons were required to discriminate between identical and different pairs of lights in a same/different signal-detection task. Ifthe two lights projected onto the stimulus field, which was mounted behind the center response key in a three-key chamber, were identical in intensity, a single peck on the left key was reinforced with food. If the two lights differed in intensity, rightkey pecks were reinforced. Each pigeon experienced all possible pairs (45) of 10 levels of light intensity. The percentage of correct responses was taken as an ordinal measure of the brightness difference between the lights constituting a pair, and was used to determine interval scales of brightness in the pigeon. The brightness scale for pigeons was similar to that obtained from human subjects in judging brightness differences. 371Although the relation between brightness and luminance has been studied extensively in humans (Marks, 1966(Marks, , 1968(Marks, , 1971(Marks, , 1972 there have been only a few attempts to determine the function relating brightness to luminance in animals. Herrnstein and Van Sommers (1962), in attempting to determine if a power function (Stevens's law) related brightness to luminance, trained pigeons to respond at different rates to lights of different intensities. The response rates at these training intensities were constrained such that response rate was a power function of intensity. When testing at intermediate intensities, Herrnstein and Van Sommers found that the intermediate stimuli elicited response rates that were consistent with a power law formulation. However, as Blough (1965) pointed out, the power law was, in a very direct sense, "built into" the response measure. Furthermore, when Blough analyzed Herrnstein and Van Sommer's data, he found that response rate was closer to a logarithmic, rather than a power, function of intensity. In general, to use response rate to measure sensation in a technique such as this, one must assume that response rate is proportional to sensory magnitude. Considering the number of factors that are known to influence response rate, the probability of such a correspondence is impossible to assess.Boakes (1969) employed a bisection technique to scale brightness. In this procedure, pigeons were trained to peck a right key for a bright stimulus and a left key for a dim one. Intermediate stimuli were then presented to determine the stimulus that produced equal pecking on both keys. Presumably, this stimulus bisected the sensory interval. But, as Blough and Blough (1977) probability of a side-key response and influence the location of the bisection point. Since there is no easy way to control or compensate for such potential response biases in the bisection procedure, they pose a problem for the use of bisection techniques in animal psychophysics.In the experiments reported here, brightness scales were obtained from pigeons using nonmetric scaling techniques. Pigeons were required to discriminate between identical and different pairs of lights in a same/different sig...

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“…This transfer is under the control of attention via a switch between the pacemaker and the accumulator, which can be closed, allowing pulse transfer when attention is directed to time, or opened, interrupting the accumulation process when attention is diverted from time (Meck, 1984;Rousseau, Picard, & Pitre, 1984;Zakay & Block, 1996). In this view, the state of the switch may be modified during two periods in the break paradigm.…”

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confidence: 99%

To count or not to count: the effect of instructions on expecting a break in timing

Gaudreault

Fortin

2012

Atten Percept Psychophys

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When a break is expected during a time interval production, longer intervals are produced as the break occurs later during the interval. This effect of break location was interpreted as a result of distraction related to break expectancy in previous studies. In the present study, the influence of target duration and of instructions about chronometric counting strategies on the break location effect was examined. Using a strategy such as chronometric counting enhances the reliability of temporal processing, typically in terms of reduced variability, and could influence how timing is affected by break expectancy, especially when relatively long target durations are used. In two experiments, results show that time productions lengthened with increasing value of break location at various target durations and that variability was greater in the no-counting than in the counting instruction condition. More important, the break location effect was stronger in the no-counting than in the counting instruction condition. We conclude that chronometric counting orients attention toward timing processes, making them less likely to be disrupted by concurrent nontemporal processes. Keywords Temporal processing . Attention: divided attention and inattention . Grouping and segmentationThe perceived duration of a period of time varies depending on the orientation of our attention: Time seems longer if our attention is oriented to its passage and shorter when we are absorbed in some concurrent activity. This interference effect, one of the most consistent effects in the timing literature (Brown, 1997(Brown, , 2008b, has contributed significantly to establishing the assumption that attention plays a critical role in time estimation in humans. Numerous studies, using a dual-task paradigm, have confirmed the imperative role of attention in timing under prospective conditions, when participants know before the beginning of the task that a temporal judgment will be required. When participants are performing temporal and nontemporal tasks simultaneously (e.g., perceptual, mental arithmetic, motor tracking), the perceived duration shortens with increasing difficulty or duration of nontemporal processing (

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An Adaptive Counter Model for Time Estimation

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Production of time intervals from segmented and nonsegmented inputs

Production of time intervals from segmented and nonsegmented inputs

An interval scale of brightness for the pigeon

To count or not to count: the effect of instructions on expecting a break in timing

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