Vierordt's<i>The Experimental Study of the Time Sense</i>(1868) and its legacy

Lejeune, Helga; Wearden, J. H.

doi:10.1080/09541440802453006

Cited by 226 publications

(214 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(25 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

184

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Studies using simple sensorimotor tasks suggest that human participants are adept at learning the distribution of sets of stimuli and integrating this acquired knowledge with sensory evidence when making decisions and planning actions (4,(10)(11)(12)(13). For example, a classic finding in temporal reproduction experiments is that judgments converge toward a central valueparticipants consistently overestimate shorter durations and underestimate longer ones (14,15). The center of convergence at which there is no constant reproduction error (termed the "indifference point") is not fixed but rather, shifts depending on the set of durations presented (16,17).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalization of prior information for rapid Bayesian time estimation

Roach

McGraw

Whitaker

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

106

157

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To enable effective interaction with the environment, the brain combines noisy sensory information with expectations based on prior experience. There is ample evidence showing that humans can learn statistical regularities in sensory input and exploit this knowledge to improve perceptual decisions and actions. However, fundamental questions remain regarding how priors are learned and how they generalize to different sensory and behavioral contexts. In principle, maintaining a large set of highly specific priors may be inefficient and restrict the speed at which expectations can be formed and updated in response to changes in the environment. However, priors formed by generalizing across varying contexts may not be accurate. Here, we exploit rapidly induced contextual biases in duration reproduction to reveal how these competing demands are resolved during the early stages of prior acquisition. We show that observers initially form a single prior by generalizing across duration distributions coupled with distinct sensory signals. In contrast, they form multiple priors if distributions are coupled with distinct motor outputs. Together, our findings suggest that rapid prior acquisition is facilitated by generalization across experiences of different sensory inputs but organized according to how that sensory information is acted on.Bayesian inference | time perception | sensorimotor learning L ike all complex animals, humans rely on their senses to extract information about the environment and guide decision making and behavior. Often, however, sensory information is ambiguous. Signals transmitted to the senses can be weak or degraded, such as patterns of reflected light under low illumination or speech sounds in noisy environments. Moreover, sensory representations of even the most high-fidelity signals tend to be variable (1) and are insufficient to completely disambiguate different distal causes (2). Mounting empirical evidence indicates that, when forming decisions and planning actions, the brain combines uncertain sensory information with expectations based on prior knowledge (3-6). For example, a variety of biases in visual perception have been shown to be consistent with reliance on prior knowledge regarding statistical regularities in the environment, such as the distribution of local orientations (7) and speeds (8) in natural scenes and the positioning of light sources (9). In many studies, perception and behavior have been shown to be well-described by near-optimal integration of sensory evidence and prior knowledge according to the principles of statistical decision theory.Prior knowledge can be acquired over a range of different timescales. Priors specifying stable statistical characteristics of the environment are typically thought to be either innate or the consequence of life-long implicit learning (5, 7). However, context-specific priors can also be formed based on recent experiences. Studies using simple sensorimotor tasks suggest that human participants are adept at learning the distribution of set...

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Generalization of prior information for rapid Bayesian time estimation

Roach

McGraw

Whitaker

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

106

157

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…A long history of timing research has shown that, similar to other physical properties, the subjective experience of the same physical duration can greatly vary depending on the context in which it is embedded (for reviews, see Bausenhart, Bratzke, & Ulrich, 2016;Shi, Church, & Meck, 2013). A famous example of such context effects is the Vierordt effect (Lejeune & Wearden, 2009;Vierordt, 1868): Within a certain range of presented intervals, relatively long intervals are underestimated and relatively short intervals are overestimated. Recent explanations for such context effects differ in their exact mechanism, but they all share the idea that not only the current trial information but also the temporal context is taken into account when participants provide duration estimates or comparison judgments (Bausenhart et al, 2016;Dyjas, Bausenhart, & Ulrich, 2012;Shi et al, 2013).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal discrimination of one’s own reaction times in dual-task performance: Context effects and methodological constraints

Bratzke

Bryce

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study we used the method of constant stimuli to investigate introspective reaction times in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm under different temporal contexts. Previous introspective PRP studies have mostly used visual analogue scales to assess introspective reaction times and found that participants were largely unaware of the typical dual-task costs that arise in this paradigm (PRP effect). This apparent limitation of introspection has been taken as evidence for a serial processing bottleneck that encompasses response selection as well as conscious perception. In our study, in each trial participants first performed the PRP task and were then presented with a comparison interval that they had to compare with their reaction time to the second task (RT2). Across three experiments, we observed that the subjective estimates of RT2 (i.e., the points of subjective equality) did not reflect the objective pattern but were almost completely biased toward the center of the comparison intervals (asymmetry effect). In a control experiment in which participants discriminated RT2s of other participants without performing the PRP task, this bias was largely reduced. We interpret these results as indicating that in dual-task performance participants acquire only poor temporal representations of their own reaction times, and the apparent unawareness of the PRP effect may reflect disturbed timing abilities rather than a conscious perception bottleneck.

show abstract

“…Specifically, these results point at a migration of reproduced durations (a.k.a. memory mixing), possibly because the three durations were randomly assigned to each trial rather than being blocked (i.e., Vierordt's law; Gu & Meck, 2011;Lejeune & Wearden, 2009). Additionally, an unexpected result was found in Experiment 1, where reproductions in trials in which the static stimulus was encoded or decoded were longer than the target duration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

Asymmetrical modulation of time perception by increase versus decrease in coherence of motion

Karşılar

Balcı

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Stimulus properties are known to affect duration judgments. In this study, we tested the effect of motion coherence levels in randomly moving dots on the perceived duration of these stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 2 we tested participants on a temporal reproduction task, using stimuli with varying degrees of motion coherence as the to-be-timed stimuli. Our results in both experiments showed that increasing motion coherence from the encoded (i.e. the first) to the reproduced (i.e. the second) stimulus leads to longer reproduction times. These effects were primarily additive in nature, and their magnitude increased with the difference between the coherence levels in the encoding versus reproduction (decoding) phases. This effect was not mirrored when there was a decrease in motion coherence. Experiment 3 tested if the differential number of exploratory saccadic eye-movements during encoding and reproduction predicted these effects. The behavioral findings of Experiment 1 and 2 were replicated in the third experiment, and the change in the number of eye movements from encoding to reproduction predicted the reproduction time when there was an increase in motion coherence. These results are explained by the effect of attention on the latency to initiate temporal integration that is only manifested when there is an increase in the level of motion coherence.

show abstract

Vierordt'sThe Experimental Study of the Time Sense(1868) and its legacy

Cited by 226 publications

References 24 publications

Generalization of prior information for rapid Bayesian time estimation

Generalization of prior information for rapid Bayesian time estimation

Temporal discrimination of one’s own reaction times in dual-task performance: Context effects and methodological constraints

Asymmetrical modulation of time perception by increase versus decrease in coherence of motion

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About