Multiple Duration Priors Within and Across the Senses

Rhodes, Darren; Seth, Anil K.; Roseboom, Warrick

doi:10.1101/467027

Cited by 10 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 93 publications

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“…The general overestimation we found in the behavioral results might potentially be explained by the integration of these visual stimuli in temporal estimation (Shi & Burr, 2016). Future studies might look further into potential modality differences in contextual calibration and their neural underpinnings (Rhodes, Seth, & Roseboom, 2018;Roach et al, 2017). Furthermore, we found no significant decoding corresponding to the windows of CNV differences.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 54%

Temporal context actively shapes EEG signatures of time perception

Damsma

Schlichting

Rijn

2020

Preprint

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Our subjective perception of time is optimized to temporal regularities in the environment. This is illustrated by the central tendency effect: when estimating a range of intervals, short intervals are overestimated whereas long intervals are underestimated to reduce the overall estimation error. Most models of interval timing ascribe this effect to the weighting of the current interval with previous memory traces after the interval has been perceived. Alternatively, the perception of the duration could already be flexibly tuned to its temporal context. We investigated this hypothesis using an interval reproduction task with a shorter and longer interval range. As expected, reproductions were biased towards the subjective mean of each presented range. EEG analysis showed that temporal context affected neural dynamics during the perception phase. Specifically, longer previous durations decreased CNV and P2 amplitude and increased beta power. In addition, multivariate pattern analysis showed that it is possible to decode context from the transient EEG signal quickly after the onset and offset of the perception phase. Together, these results suggest that temporal context creates dynamic expectations which actively affect the perception of duration.The subjective sense of duration does not arise in isolation, but is informed by previous experiences. This is demonstrated by abundant evidence showing that duration estimates are biased towards previously perceived time intervals. However, it is yet unknown whether this temporal context actively affects perception or asserts its influence in later, post-perceptual stages as proposed by most current formal models of this task. Using an interval reproduction task, we here show that EEG signatures flexibly adapt to the temporal context during perceptual encoding. Furthermore, interval history could be decoded from the transient EEG signal even when the current duration was identical.All in all, our results suggest that context actively influences perception.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 54%

Temporal context actively shapes EEG signatures of time perception

Damsma

Schlichting

Rijn

2020

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Adding additional cues that potentially help participants to distinguish between temporal contexts did not improve the separation of both sets of intervals. These results are interesting as earlier work (e.g., Rhodes et al, 2018) has shown that unique prior distributions can be formed when intervals are defined by physical properties of the signal. This work indicates that presenting "blocks-of-trials" is sufficient to generate unique prior distributions, and adding additional cues to aid categorization did not affect the prior distributions sufficiently to be reflected in central tendency related statistics in this study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 53%

“…When physical properties of the stimuli are not indicative of the context, other aspects need to be sufficiently distinct between contexts to obtain a temporal context effect. In how far statistical properties of the stimulus material (i.e., the distributions of durations) have to differ between contexts has recently received some attention in literature (e.g., Acerbi et al, 2012;Rhodes, Seth, & Roseboom, 2018;Roach et al, 2017). For example, Rhodes et al (2018) demonstrated that the behavior of human participants was best described by a Bayesian Observer Model that assumed a different prior based on the specific parameters of the presented signal (i.e., visual flashes or auditory tones, high or low pitch tones, or white noise versus pure tone audio).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Experiment 1B we tested the effect of more or less abstract topdown categorization instructions on the temporal context effect, either by means of explicit information or by means of a manipulation of the physical properties of the presented interval (cf., Rhodes et al, 2018). Intervals of the short and long context were, as in Experiment 1A, presented in blocks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intervals of the short and long context were, as in Experiment 1A, presented in blocks. In a between-participant manipulation, participants received further information about the experiment in that they were either informed before the start of each block whether they would (1) perceive shorter or longer intervals; (2) whether they would perceive intervals from 'set A' or 'set B' without explicit information about the relative durations (but which were associated with shorter or longer intervals); (3) whether they will hear higher or lower pitched tones (which were, again, associated with shorter or longer intervals, but now this information was accessible on each trial, see also Rhodes et al, 2018); or (4) they received no further information at all (baseline condition). If participants integrate such additional information in their representations of the different contexts, these representations could be more distinct from each other, or the experience of the previous block (i.e., the other context) could be disregarded more easily, leading to a quicker recalibration of the prior and, again, more distinct representations of the two temporal contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Eliciting contextual temporal calibration: The effect of bottom-up and top-down information in reproduction tasks

2019

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A B S T R A C TBayesian integration assumes that a current observation is integrated with previous observations. An example in the temporal domain is the central tendency effect: when a range of durations is presented, a regression towards the mean is observed. Furthermore, a context effect emerges if a partially overlapping lower and a higher range of durations is presented in a blocked design, with the overlapping durations pulled towards the mean duration of the block. We determine under which conditions this context effect is observed, and whether explicit cues strengthen the effect. Each block contained either two or three durations, with one duration present in both blocks. We provided either no information at the start of each block about the nature of that block, provided written ("short" / "long" or "A" / "B") categorizations, or operationalized pitch (low vs high) to reflect the temporal context. We demonstrate that (1) the context effect emerges as long as sufficiently distinct durations are presented; (2) the effect is not modulated by explicit instructions or other cues; (3) just a single additional duration is sufficient to produce a context effect. Taken together, these results provide information on the most efficient operationalization to evoke the context effect, allowing for highly economical experimental designs, and highlights the automaticity by which priors are constructed.

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Humans integrate duration information across sensory modalities: Evidence for an amodal internal reference of time.

Ellinghaus¹,

Giel²,

Ulrich³

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Perception is driven not only by current stimulation but also by previous sensory experience, which may serve as a perceptual prior for stimulus processing. A possible mechanism underlying this phenomenon is formalized in the internal reference model, which assumes that humans rely on an internal reference that updates continuously by integrating past and present stimulus representations. As a direct consequence of this process, discrimination sensitivity is higher when a constant standard precedes rather than follows a variable comparison in two-alternative forced-choice tasks. The present study exploited this Type B effect in order to examine whether an internal reference can be formed across stimuli varying within and across modalities. In a series of four experiments, task-irrelevant and/or taskrelevant features either remained constant or varied from trial to trial. In duration discrimination, the Type B effect as a proxy of perceptual prior formation was not affected by variation of pitch or modality. However, in intensity discrimination, it was considerably reduced when stimulus modality and thus also the task-relevant feature (i.e., brightness and loudness) alternated rather than remained constant. These results indicate that temporal information can be isolated from stimulus-specific features and integrated across subsequent trials into a perceptual prior for stimulus judgment, whereas intensity information from different modalities seems to hamper this process. In general, our findings contribute to a growing body of research aimed at understanding the formation and content of perceptual priors.

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Multiple Duration Priors Within and Across the Senses

Cited by 10 publications

References 93 publications

Temporal context actively shapes EEG signatures of time perception

Temporal context actively shapes EEG signatures of time perception

Eliciting contextual temporal calibration: The effect of bottom-up and top-down information in reproduction tasks

Humans integrate duration information across sensory modalities: Evidence for an amodal internal reference of time.

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