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16 - Relative timing and perceptual asynchrony

from Part III - Temporal phenomena: binding and asynchrony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2010

By
Derek H. Arnold
Edited by
Romi Nijhawan  and
Beena Khurana
Romi Nijhawan
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
Beena Khurana
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Summary

Summary

How do human observers determine the relative timings of different events? One perspective, which I shall refer to as the brain–time theory of perception, suggests that apparent timing is related to when specific analyses are concluded within distinct and relatively independent regions of the brain. This proposal is controversial, not least because it suggests that temporal perception is error prone and subject to the rates at which analyses are concluded in different parts of the brain. One observation that may favor this perspective is that physically coincident changes in color and direction can appear asynchronous – a perceptual asynchrony. In this chapter I will review the theoretical interpretations and empirical evidence that relate to this phenomenon. I will argue that this timing illusion provides good evidence for a relationship between the time courses of sensory processing in the brain and perceived timing.

Introduction

How do we determine relative timing? Human observers can determine the relative timings of a remarkable variety of events. For instance, we can judge the timings of visual relative to other visual (Moutoussis & Zeki 1997a,b), auditory (Fujisaki et al. 2004), and haptic (Vogels 2004) events. Subjectively it seems that one of the events can be entirely intrinsic to the nervous system, like the sensation of reaching seven while mentally counting from one to ten. The fact that these judgments can be made dictates that the necessary information is encoded in a form that can then be reported – but it is not clear how this feat is achieved.

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Space and Time in Perception and Action , pp. 254 - 277
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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