Pigeons’ memory for time: Assessment of the role of subjective shortening in the duration-comparison procedure

Rooyen, Patrick Van; Santi, Angelo

doi:10.3758/lb.37.1.74

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Future studies need to differentiate the role of these circuits, and to clarify the neurobiological mechanisms involved in the monitoring, maintenance and reallocation of attentional and working memory resources involved in interval timing, subjective shortening and the categorical scaling of duration (e.g. Meck 2005;Santi et al 2007;Penney et al 2008;Pfeuty et al 2008;Wittmann et al 2008;van Rooyen & Santi 2009). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relative time sharing: new findings and an extension of the resource allocation model of temporal processing

Buhusi

Meck

2009

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

141

163

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Individuals time as if using a stopwatch that can be stopped or reset on command. Here, we review behavioural and neurobiological data supporting the time-sharing hypothesis that perceived time depends on the attentional and memory resources allocated to the timing process. Neuroimaging studies in humans suggest that timekeeping tasks engage brain circuits typically involved in attention and working memory. Behavioural, pharmacological, lesion and electrophysiological studies in lower animals support this time-sharing hypothesis. When subjects attend to a second task, or when intruder events are presented, estimated durations are shorter, presumably due to resources being taken away from timing. Here, we extend the time-sharing hypothesis by proposing that resource reallocation is proportional to the perceived contrast, both in temporal and non-temporal features, between intruders and the timed events. New findings support this extension by showing that the effect of an intruder event is dependent on the relative duration of the intruder to the intertrial interval. The conclusion is that the brain circuits engaged by timekeeping comprise not only those primarily involved in time accumulation, but also those involved in the maintenance of attentional and memory resources for timing, and in the monitoring and reallocation of those resources among tasks.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relative time sharing: new findings and an extension of the resource allocation model of temporal processing

Buhusi

Meck

2009

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

141

163

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“…Although many studies have explored appreciations of numerical ordering in both non-human animals and preverbal human infants (e.g., Addessi, Mancini, Crescimbene, Pado-Schioppa, & Visalberghi, 2008; Agrillo, Dadda, Serena, & Bisazza, 2008; Brannon, 2002; Brannon & Terrace, 1998; Cantlon & Brannon, 2006; Carazo, Font, Forteza-Behrendt, & Desfilis, 2009; Hauser, Carey, & Hauser, 2000; Irie-Sugimoto, Kobayashi, Sato, & Hasgawa, 2009; Jaakkola, Fellner, Erb, Rodriguez, & Guarino, 2005; Suanda, Tompson, & Brannon, 2008; see Anderson & Cordes, 2013, for review), only a few studies, primarily with pigeons, have demonstrated nonverbal comprehension of an abstract ordinal rule for temporal quantities (i.e., durations; Dreyfus, Fetterman, Smith, & Stubbs, 1988; Fetterman, 2006; Fetterman & Dreyfus, 1986; Van Rooyen & Santi, 2009). 1 In these studies, pigeons experience the successive presentation of two visual stimuli that vary in duration and are trained to respond on two choice keys based upon the relative duration of the two stimuli.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ordinal judgments in the rat: An understanding of longer and shorter for suprasecond, but not subsecond, durations.

Cordes¹,

Meck²

2014

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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An emerging corpus of clinical and neuroimaging data suggests that subsecond and suprasecond durations are represented via 2 distinct mechanisms in humans; however, surprisingly, behavioral data to this effect are lacking. In our first experiment, we perform the first systematic exploration of subsecond and suprasecond timing within the same session in nonhuman subjects. Rats were trained to judge the relative duration of 2 sequential stimuli, responding on one lever if the first stimulus was longer or on a second lever if the converse was true. Our data provide strong evidence of an abstract understanding of longer and shorter for durations in the suprasecond range, whereas responding was at chance levels for durations in the subsecond range. Data from a second experiment reveal that this pattern is not due to an inability to time subsecond signals, as rats respond systematically in subsecond and suprasecond bisection tasks. Together, our results provide the first clear behavioral evidence of a discontinuity in the mental time line. These data from rats are discussed in light of similar findings of a discontinuity in the mental number line in human infants.

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“…A subjective shortening effect has repeatedly been found in experimental examinations of temporal comparison and memory for stimulus duration in both humans and nonhumans (e.g., Santi, Hoover, & Simmons, 2011;Spetch & Wilkie, 1983;Van Rooyen & Santi, 2009;Wearden & Ferrara, 1993;Wearden, Goodson, & Foran, 2007;Wearden, Parry, & Stamp, 2002). In the subjective shortening effect, the remembered duration of a stimulus decreases as a function of the delay between presentations of the target and probe stimuli.…”

Section: Simulationmentioning

confidence: 85%

A shared short-term memory system for stimulus duration and stimulus frequency.

Bancroft¹,

Hockley²,

Servos³

2014

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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Recent research has suggested the existence of a modality-independent memory system that is responsible for storing representations of simple, scalar stimulus attributes, such as the frequency of an auditory pure tone or the duration of a stimulus. In the present study, we modify an existing computational model of short-term memory (STM) for stimulus frequency to allow it to perform STM tasks for both stimulus frequency and stimulus duration, supporting the notion of a common scalar STM system. We further demonstrate the utility of the model by showing that it can reproduce the subjective shortening effect, a classic finding in the psychophysical literature.

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Pigeons’ memory for time: Assessment of the role of subjective shortening in the duration-comparison procedure

Cited by 5 publications

References 53 publications

Relative time sharing: new findings and an extension of the resource allocation model of temporal processing

Relative time sharing: new findings and an extension of the resource allocation model of temporal processing

Ordinal judgments in the rat: An understanding of longer and shorter for suprasecond, but not subsecond, durations.

A shared short-term memory system for stimulus duration and stimulus frequency.

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