What is timed in a fixed-interval temporal bisection procedure?

Abstract

Recent research on interval timing in the behavioral and neurological sciences has employed a concurrent fixedinterval (FI) procedure first reported by Platt and Davis (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 9, 160-170, 1983). Studies employing the task typically assess just 1 dependent variable, the switch/bisection point; however, multiple measures of timing are available in the procedure and it is unclear (a) what is timed (i.e., learned) by subjects and (b) what other measures might tell us about timing in the task and generally. The main objective of the current experiment was to utilize multiple dependent measures of timing accuracy and precision derived from the task to assess whether the 2 FIs are timed independently or if timing 1 FI interferes with timing the other, and vice versa. Four pigeons were exposed to an FI temporal bisection procedure with parametric manipulations across two phases. In the constant phase, the short FI was always the same; the long FI was 2 to 16 times the short FI and changed across conditions. In the proportional phase, the long FI was always 4 times the duration of the short FI. Across both phases, pigeon mean bisection points were near the geometric mean of the 2 FIs.Coefficients of variance increased as the durations to be timed increased. Results suggested pigeons' timing of the short FI was affected by the presence of the long FI, and vice versa. The FI temporal bisection task offers multiple dependent variables for analysis and is well suited for studying temporal learning and decision making.

Beyond the classic sensory systems: Characteristics of the sense of time of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) assessed in a visual temporal discrimination and a bisection task

“…To give examples, the seal's Weber fraction is comparable to the Weber fractions obtained in adult humans of different age for STI pairs of 2 s/8 s (Ortega & López, 2008) or 3 s/6 s (Lustig & Meck, 2011; Penney et al, 2000; Penney et al, 2014), however, the seal's timing performance is worse for an STI pair of 4 s/8 s (Zélanti & Droit‐Volet, 2011); comparing seals with children again changes the picture as the children's performance is far inferior when tested with STI pairs of 1 s/4 s and 2 s/8 s (Droit‐Volet et al, 2003; Droit‐Volet & Clement, 2001; Rattat & Droit‐Volet, 2001). Pigeons and seals perform comparably precise for an STI pair of 1 s/4 s, whereas seals are outperformed by pigeons for an STI pair of 2 s/8 s (Fox et al, 2016). Nevertheless, our bisection results further strengthen the overall impression obtained in previous seal timing studies (Heinrich et al, 2016; Heinrich et al, 2020) that timing in seals compares favorably with the timing performances of other species, and differences in performance can most likely be attributed to the fact that the studies differ in experimental details and not that the timing abilities differ systematically.…”

“…Moreover, these experiments determined how these two aspects change with the properties of the stimulus (Droit‐Volet, Meck, & Penney, 2007; Lustig & Meck, 2011; Meck, 1984; Ortega & López, 2008; Penney, Gibbon, & Meck, 2000), the duration of the STIs (Wearden et al, 1997), stimulus ratio (Wearden & Ferrara, 1996), or the different spacing of the TTIs (Penney, Gibbon, & Meck, 2008; Raslear, 1985; Wearden & Ferrara, 1995), just to name a few modifications. This way the timing abilities in a variety of organisms, such as rats (e.g., Church & Deluty, 1977; Kim, Ghim, Lee, & Jung, 2013; Meck, 1983, 1984; Raslear, 1985; Siegel & Church, 1984), pigeons (e.g., Araiba & Brown, 2017; Fox, Prue, & Kyonka, 2016; Laude, Daniels, Wade, & Zentall, 2016; Machado & Keen, 1999; Machado & Pata, 2005; Pinheiro de Carvalho, Machado, & Tonneau, 2016; Platt & Davis, 1983), mice (e.g., Akdoğan & Balcı, 2016; Penney et al, 2008), dogs (Domeniconi & Machado, 2017), and humans of different age (e.g., Allan, 1991; Allan & Gerhardt, 2001; Droit‐Volet, Clément, & Fayol, 2003; Droit‐Volet & Wearden, 2001; Kopec & Brody, 2010; Lustig & Meck, 2011; Provasi, Rattat, & Droit‐Volet, 2011; Rattat & Droit‐Volet, 2001; Wearden, 1991b; Wearden et al, 1997) were characterized.…”

Interval Timing and Motivation are Dissociable when Interval-Initiating Responses are Discriminable from Target Responses

“…In Experiment 1, some rats (SL-RI) were trained to initiate their trials and those of other rats (EI) in a switch-timing task. In this task (Fox, Prue, & Kyonka, 2016), there are two potential target responses: the latency-to-switch (LTS) to the later source of food (Long-FI; Daniels et al, 2015b), and the latency-to-depart (LTD) from the earlier source of food (e.g., Balci et al, 2008). After performance stabilized, rats were challenged with a 1-h pre-feeding probe.…”

Trace Theory of Perception for Temporal Bisection

“…If non-human animals are uninterested in maximizing the informativeness of their responses, equation ( 5) should suffice for them. This has been shown to be the case: Dogs (Cliff et al, 2019;Domeniconi & Machado, 2017), pigeons (Araiba & Brown, 2017;Fetterman & Killeen, 1992;Fox et al, 2016;Platt & Davis, 1983) and rats (Church & Deluty, 1977;Kim et al, 2009;Orduña et al, 2007) bisect at or near the GM (Note 3).…”