Can we use verbal estimation to dissect the internal clock? Differentiating the effects of pacemaker rate, switch latencies, and judgment processes

Abstract

Behavioural timing is frequently assumed to be based on the accumulation of pulses from a pacemaker. In humans, verbal estimation is often used to determine whether the effect of factors which influence subjective time become more pronounced at longer durations -that is, if they affect the slope of the judgment function, consistent with a change in the rate of the pacemaker. Here, participants judged blank intervals marked by two squares which either did or did not differ in size.In Experiment 1, a small change in marker size produced shorter temporal judgments than a large change. This effect was independent of objective duration and indicates that the slope changes seen in previous work are not an inevitable artefact of the verbal estimation procedure. However, Experiments 2 and 3 included conditions where the markers did not change size and established (a) that the effect of marker size depends on the other stimuli presented during the experiment, and (b) that slope effects occur even when they cannot possibly be due to a change in the rate of the pacemaker. Taken together, these results urge some caution in the use of verbal estimation as a methodology for deconstructing the putative internal clock.

Subjective Duration as a Signature of Coding Efficiency: Emerging Links Among Stimulus Repetition, Predictive Coding, and Cortical GABA Levels

“…Interestingly, when the second image was new on that trial, but a repeat of a stimulus seen 20 trials previously, subjective duration was the same as for novel stimuli, suggesting a short timescale for repetition effects -contrary to the longlasting effects of prior exposure sometimes seen in studies of RS (e.g., Henson et al, 2004. Moreover, when participants estimated the duration of the second image on a categorical scale, the repetition effect was independent of physical duration, contrary to what would be expected if repetition slowed the rate of an internal pacemaker (e.g., Matthews, 2011a).…”

Time Perception and Depressive Realism: Judgment Type, Psychophysical Functions and Bias

“…A slightly different approach, the one used here, is to identify parameters of timing models, and then investigate what variables affect each parameter e.g. [16], [17], [20], [35], [45], [53], [54]. In this study, both mood and judgment affect overall bias, and the intercept but not the slope parameter of the psychophysical function.…”

About the (Non)scalar Property for Time Perception

“….the input process is thought as one which takes a measure of the temporal extent of a stimulus pattern, compares the measure either to an internal standard or to the memory of a measure of a standard stimulus, and triggers a response, which may or may not be biased, depending on the outcome of the comparison process" [33, p. 26]. The reader probably recognizes the three levels of processing-the clock (the input process), memory and decision-making-which have been emphasized since in the information processing version of SET [34]. In other words, nearly 40 years ago, these authors noted how critical these three processing levels are for accounting for timing and time perception (Fig.…”