Duration discrimination of filled and empty auditory intervals: Cognitive and perceptual factors

Abstract

Adult subjects were presented with two auditory stimuli per trial, and their task was to decide which ofthe two was longer in duration. An adaptive psychophysical procedure was used. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4, the base duration was 50 msec, whereas in Experiment 3, the base duration was 1 sec. In Experiments 1,2, and 4, it was found that filled intervals (continuous tones) were discriminated more accurately than empty intervals (with onset and offset marked by clicks). It was concluded that this difference was perceptual rather than cognitive in nature, since performance on filled and empty intervals was not affected by increasing cognitive load in a dual-task procedure (Experiment 2) but was affected by backward masking (Experiment 4). In contrast, the results of Experiment 3 showed that duration discrimination of filled auditory intervals oflonger duration was cognitively influenced, since performance was impaired by increasing cognitive load. Implications for notions of perceptual processing and timing mechanisms underlying differences in duration discrimination with filled and empty intervals are discussed.There are two types of stimuli used in time perception studies. One type is the empty (silent) interval and the other type is the filled interval. In auditorily marked empty intervals, for example, only the onset and the offset of the interval are marked by clicks, whereas in filled intervals, a tone or noise burst is presented continuously throughout the interval. Thus, in empty intervals, there is no auditory stimulus presented during the interval itself. Surprisingly, there are very few published studies on the influence of filled versus empty intervals on performance in time perception experiments involving brief intervals (i.e., intervals less than 1 sec in duration).In her review article, Allan (1979) suggested that given the results of two duration-discrimination studies reported by Abel (1972aAbel ( , 1972b, one can conclude that performance with filled intervals appears to be more accurate than performance with empty intervals. However, this comparison was not the focus of Abel's studies. In a study by Craig (1973), subjects had to adjust the time between two lOOO-Hz tones until it appeared equal in duration to the first tone. Craig found a constant error in the percepPortions of this research were presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, in San Francisco, August 1991. Preparation of this article was supported by NIH Grant AG09130-01 to Susan O. Lima. We thank Lester Krueger, Lorraine Allan, and Lloyd Avant for helpful comments. Correspondence may be addressed to Thomas H. Rammsayer, Department of Psychology, University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel Str. lOF, 0-6300 Giessen, Germany (e-mail: Thoram@DGIHRZOI.bitnet).tion of empty intervals relative to filled intervals. This finding joins those of Abel (1972aAbel ( , 1972b in suggesting that performance on filled intervals is more accurate than performance on empty intervals. Although Craig concluded that different ...

Brain activation patterns during measurement of sub- and supra-second intervals

“…Time measurement has also been shown to have quite different properties at these two duration ranges. For instance, psychophysical characteristics differ (Gibbon, Malapani, Dale, & Gallistel, 1997), pharmacological agents (Mitriani, Shekerdijiiski, Gourevitch, & Yanev, 1977;Rammsayer, 1999) and the distraction of attention in dual task scenarios (Rammsayer & Lima, 1991) can have differential influence (but see Macar, Grondin, & Casini, 1994), while lesions to specific brain areas elicit differential impairments (Clarke, Ivry, Grinband, Roberts, & Shimizu, 1996). Based on these observations, several authors (Gibbon et al, 1997;Hazeltine, 1997;Ivry, 1996;Lewis & Miall, 2003;Rammsayer, 1999) have hypothesised that time intervals in the millisecond and multisecond ranges are measured by independent brain mechanisms.…”

Duration discrimination in the range of milliseconds and seconds in children with ADHD and their unaffected siblings

“…However, there are many results from psychophysical (Rammsayer & Lima, 1991 ;Karmarkar & Buonomano, 2007) and pharmacopsychological studies (Rammsayer, 1992a(Rammsayer, , 1993(Rammsayer, , 1997(Rammsayer, , 1999(Rammsayer, , 2006 that cannot be explained by a single timing mechanism for the whole range of time. These findings support the idea of two (or even more) different timing mechanisms.…”

The Perception of Empty and Filled Time Intervals by Pigeons

“…Whether the interval to be timed is filled or empty also affects temporal perception in both humans (Abel, 1972a(Abel, , 1972bGrondin, 1993;Rammsayer & Lima, 1991) and pigeons (Mantanus, 1981). Although Mantanus (1981) reported that pigeons' temporal discriminations were more accurate with filled intervals than with empty intervals, the interpretation of this effect is ambiguous because of a number of design and general test procedure problems, which were described by Kraemer, Randall, and Brown (1997).…”