Scalar Properties in Human Timing: Conformity and Violations

Abstract

Data from studies of timing in human participants were reviewed with respect to their conformity to the two scalar properties of timing: mean accuracy and the scalar property of variance. Results reviewed were taken from studies of temporal generalization, temporal bisection, discrimination methods, and "classical" timing tasks such as the reproduction, production, and verbal estimation of duration. Evidence for one or both scalar properties was found in many studies, including those using children and elderly participants, but systematic violations were sometimes noted. These violations occurred (a) when very short durations (< 100 ms) were timed, (b) in situations in which timing tasks varying in difficulty were compared, (c) when classical timing tasks were employed, and (d) in situations where highly practised observers exhibited unusual patterns of variance. A later section attempted to reconcile some of these violations with an underlying scalar-consistent timing mechanism.

Brief Report: Impaired Temporal Reproduction Performance in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…According to Vierordt's law (1868), when assessing time in retrospect, shorter durations tend to be overestimated, whereas longer durations tend to be underestimated; reviews of empirical work in the field report support for this law in many instances (Block & Zakay, 1997;Wearden & Lejeune, 2008).…”

“…According to this law, the shorter durations of the range will be overestimated while the longer durations will tend to be underestimated. With respect to the variability of performance, most often, a form of Weber's law applies in that variability in perceiving or producing intervals will tend to be a constant proportion of the mean presented duration (Wearden and Lejeune, 2008).…”

Humans don’t time subsecond intervals like a stopwatch.

“…To answer this question, we can turn to the known psychophysical properties of time perception. Humans generally show a linear relationship between interval duration and the standard deviation of the resulting trial-to-trial noise (Wearden & Lejeune, 2008). This is known as the scalar property.…”

“…This is most evident for very short intervals, where the small constant component of the variable error is not swamped by a large scalar component. Hence the overall precision of interval timing is probably best described as following a generalised version of Weber's law (Wearden & Lejeune, 2008), although the exact details of this relationship continue to be debated (e.g. Bangert, Reuter-Lorenz, & Seidler, 2011;Crystal, 1999;Lewis & Miall, 2009;Matthews & Grondin, 2012).…”

The impact of a concurrent motor task on auditory and visual temporal discrimination tasks

“…According to the parallel-timing model developed by Rousseau and Rousseau (1996), modality-specific switch-accumulator systems receive input from a common pacemaker and feed into common memory and decision mechanisms (see also van Rijn & Taatgen, 2008). Therefore, attention likely modulates time discrimination abilities by acting on two different switches (Wearden & Lejeune, 2008). These claims need to be tested in future research.…”