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Perceived Temporal Order and Simultaneity: Beyond Psychometric Functions

M. García-Pérez,Rocío Alcalá-Quintana

Published 2018 in Unknown venue

ABSTRACT

Perception via the traditional senses of vision, audition, touch, gustation, or olfaction implies mechanisms (the sense organs) and neural structures (the sensory pathways) that transduce, transmit, and process physical energy (in vision, audition, and touch) or molecules (in gustation and olfaction). The same holds for the non-traditional senses of nociception, thermoception, equilibrioception, and others. In contrast, time does not emanate from a physical source and we do not have a sense organ for time, yet we have a vivid experience of it. Perception of time (chronoception) for brief events manifests in two remarkable abilities arguably subserved by separate processes. One is the ability to discriminate whether or not two punctate (instantaneous) events occurred simultaneously; the other is the ability to discriminate whether or not two brief events lasted the same duration. These punctate or brief events are delivered by presenting stimuli that can be perceived with our senses. Those stimuli are the occasion for some elusive machinery in the brain to extract the signals that render our perception of the time of occurrence of punctate events and our perception of temporal durations. The duration of a stimulus is defined as the time elapsed between its onset and its offset. Then, perception of the duration of a stimulus presentation requires a second-stage process based on the output of first-stage processes determining the perceived onset and offset of the stimulus. This chapter focuses only on the first-stage processes and, specifically, on the methods used to assess their functioning and the utility of such methods to characterize timing processes. First-stage processes imply capture and transduction at the corresponding sense organ, followed by transmission of the sensory signals up the applicable pathway onto a central mechanism in the brain. Transduction, transmission, and processing of stimulus signals incur temporal delays that differ across sensory modalities but such delays also vary across stimulus types within the same modality and across repeated presentations of the exact same stimulus. When two punctate events occur simultaneously, the arrival times of

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