Time perception

About: Time perception is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1918 publications have been published within this topic receiving 87020 citations.

The Dawn of the Experimental Study of Time Perception: Höring (1864) and Mach (1865)

Abstract: This article discusses the contents of two of the earliest publications about the experimental psychology of time, those from Höring (1864) and Mach (1865). Höring’s thesis, conducted under Vierordt’s supervision, involved the discrimination of the relative rates of successive periods of beats of a metronome. In general, timing sensitivity decreased as the beats slowed, thus violating Weber’s Law of constant sensitivity for time. Mach (1865) conducted a range of experiments, using metronomes, pendulums, and different sorts of apparatus of his own design. He, likewise, found violations of Weber’s Law, with the Weber fraction following a U-shaped function of duration, with a minimum (of around 5%) at 500 or 600 ms. Mach also conducted research on the smallest temporal intervals that could be distinguished, following an earlier suggestion by Czermak, and reported that the smallest values were obtained with the auditory sense. Mach’s article also discussed the perception of rhythms, and the possibility that different animal species show different sensitivity to time. Some modern work on Weber’s Law and timing is briefly discussed at the end of the article.

Metric error monitoring for a cleaner record of timing.

Abstract: A recent line of research has shown that humans can keep track of the direction and magnitude of their timing errors without relying on feedback. But these studies tested temporal error monitoring explicitly by interrogating participants regarding their errors, which might have inadvertently primed the prospective coupling between the first-order timing and second-order metacognitive judgments. The current study utilized an indirect way of testing temporal error awareness while providing a strong objective incentive for maximizing the accuracy of first-order timing performance. In two experiments, participants were asked to maximize the average proximity of their time reproduction to the target by accepting or rejecting their time reproduction depending on the subjective judgment of their proximity to the target time interval. We found that participants more frequently opted out of a trial with a larger distance between their reproductions and the target time interval in both directions, forming a positive quadratic relationship with reproduced time. Resultantly, timing precision was lower in trials that participants opted out of. Our results provide new evidence in support of the temporal error-monitoring performance of human participants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).