Timing and time perception: A review of recent behavioral and neuroscience findings and theoretical directions

Abstract

Suppose someone had to prepare a review article on visual perception, instead of time perception. This individual would probably ask for a series of reviews, with at least one-and probably several-dedicated to color, distance, shape, and motion perception, and maybe to other aspects of visual perception. It would be very difficult to complete the same exercise for time perception since the categories of temporal experiences are not as clearly defined. However, for a reader to understand the scope of a text on time perception, it is essential to develop a representation of what the main research avenues or categories are. The present text should help the reader to grasp the scope of recent literature related to psychological time and time perception.After a brief overview of the various perspectives on what could be meant by psychological time, the review will propose to identify of series of key concepts and empirical findings that should delineate the field of time perception and timing, and will discuss some models of time perception. The article also provides a review of the main recent findings in the field in which a neuroscientific approach to timing is adopted. In this section, the roles of the cerebellum, of the cerebral cortices, and of the basal ganglia in the timing processes are emphasized. Time Perception Beyond the Focus of the Present ReviewThere is a wide range of research on psychological time and temporal processing, mainly because of the ubiquity of time in behavior and the relevance of a temporal perspective in regard to living organisms and events. There is a vast literature in social psychology as to how behavior is shaped by time (see Perret-Clermont, 2005, or Strathman & Joireman, 2005, which includes topics such as time management, time perspective, and time orientation, or the relative value of past and future (Caruso, Gilbert, & Wilson, 2008;Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). Even within the scope of experimental psychology, some studies have emphasized how the temporal structure of events determines our perception of the world (see the second part of Helfrich, 2003).Some authors who are interested in consciousness have adopted a phenomenological perspective on time (see the first part of Buccheri, Saniga, & Stuckey, 2003). Indeed, time and consciousness have become more closely linked recently with the development of a new area of research on the concept of chronesthesia (awareness of subjective time; Tulving, 2002), as opposed to noetic consciousness (awareness of the world) or autonoetic consciousness (awareness of self in time). Interestingly, there is now evidence that even animals can anticipate the future (Roberts, 2008).There are many psychological time studies related in various ways to memory processes (Block & Zakay, 2008). One research avenue deals with the chronology of events in our lives, particularly the memory of the order of occurrence of these events (Damasio, 2002;Friedman, 1993 The aim of the present review article is to guide the reader through portions of the human time per...

Duration perception in crossmodally-defined intervals

“…Time is inferred from the number of pulses registered by the accumulator. It is an ongoing debate whether the human time-keeping system might consist of a single pacemaker-accumulator mechanisms or whether multiple pacemakers and accumulators might exist that are used depending on the tasks at hand (see Grondin, 2010, for example). For different time scales, for example, such as milliseconds, seconds to hours, or circadian cycles, previous research suggests that several internal clocks exist that differ from each other in their timekeeping properties (see Buhusi & Meck, 2009;Ivry & Schlerf, 2008).…”

VLQoE: Video QoE instrumentation on the smartphone

“…However, the duration until the user perceives a freeze and reacts to it has not been studied within the scope of QoE. This is important to know as QoE assessment depends on multidisciplinary parameters such as time perception and "inner-clock" [14] of the user. Musser [39] states that the human consciousness lags 80 ms behind the actual events.…”

“…Studying the time it takes for a user to react (to press the "Freeze" button) to a freeze event, is complex and depends on many factors. The authors of [14] studied the time perception in depths, and state that the actual time is different than the subjectively perceived time. However, in this study, we assume that the users indicate a freeze as they perceive it on spot.…”

Perceptual and Computational Time Models in Game Design for Time Orientation in Learning Disabilities

“…In the literature, there are basically two categories of perceptual time models, depending on whether timing is seen as the output of a dedicated system. Grondin provides a good overview of these models in his literature review about timing and time perception [9], as summarized in Table 1. Pacemaker-counter models…”

“…It involves the ability of retrospective timing and focuses on the estimation of past actions based on temporal judgement. This is based on short momentum in seconds or minutes [9].…”