Abstract
When the timing of an event is predictable, humans automatically form implicit time-based event expectations. We investigated whether these expectations rely on absolute (e.g., 800 ms) or relative (e.g., a shorter duration) representations of time. In a choice-response task with two different pre-target intervals, participants implicitly learned that targets were predictable by interval durations. In a test phase, the two intervals were either considerably shortened or lengthened. In both cases, behavioral tendencies transferred from practice to test according to relative, not absolute, interval duration. We conclude that humans employ relative representations of time periods when forming time-based event expectations. These results suggest that learned time-based event expectations (e.g., in communication and human–machine interaction) should transfer to faster or slower environments if the relative temporal distribution of events is preserved.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
λ estimates the Bayesian odds in favor of the null hypotheses, according to Rouder, Speckman, Sun, Morey, and Iverson (2009). Cohen’s d has been standardized by difference scores, because the design is inherently within subjects (Gibbons, Hedeker, & Davis, 1993).
References
Bartolo, R., & Merchant, H. (2009). Learning and generalization of time production in humans: Rules of transfer across modalities and interval durations. Experimental Brain Research, 197, 91–100.
Bush, L. K., Hess, U., & Wolford, G. (1993). Transformations for within-subject designs: A Monte Carlo investigation. Psychological Bulletin, 113, 566–579.
Church, R. M., & Deluty, M. Z. (1977). Bisection of temporal intervals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 3, 216–228.
de Carvalho, M. P., & Machado, A. (2012). Relative versus absolute stimulus control in the temporal bisection task. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 98, 23–44.
Elithorn, A., & Lawrence, C. (1955). Central inhibition: Some refractory observations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 11, 211–220.
Janssen, P., & Shadlen, M. N. (2005). A representation of the hazard rate of elapsed time in macaque area LIP. Nature Neuroscience, 8, 234–241. doi:10.1038/nn1386
Kunde, W. (2003). Temporal response-effect compatibility. Psychological Research, 67, 153–159.
Leon, M. I., & Shadlen, M. N. (2003). Representation of time by neurons in the posterior parietal cortex of the macaque. Neuron, 38, 317–327.
Leuthold, H., Sommer, W., & Ulrich, R. (1996). Partial advance information and response preparation: Inferences from the lateralized readiness potential. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125, 307–323.
Los, S. A., & Agter, F. (2005). Reweighting sequential effects across different distributions of foreperiods: Segregating elementary contributions to nonspecific preparation. Perception & Psychophysics, 67, 1161–1170. doi:10.3758/BF03193549
Los, S. A., Knol, D. L., & Boers, R. M. (2001). The foreperiod effect revisited: Conditioning as a basis for nonspecific preparation. Acta Psychologica, 106, 121–145.
Meegan, D. V., Aslin, R. N., & Jacobs, R. A. (2000). Motor timing learned without motor training. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 860–862.
Mendez, J. C., Prado, L., Mendoza, G., & Merchant, H. (2011). Temporal and spatial categorization in human and non-human primates. Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, 5(50).
Merchant, H., Harrington, D. L., & Meck, W. H. (2013). Neural basis of the perception and estimation of time. The Annual Review of Neuroscience, 36, 313–336.
Molet, M., & Zentall, T. R. (2008). Relative judgments affect assessments of stimulus duration. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 431–436.
Nagarajan, S. S., Blake, D. T., Wright, B. A., Byl, N., & Merzenich, M. M. (1998). Practice-related improvements in somatosensory interval discrimination are temporally specific but generalize across skin location, hemisphere, and modality. Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 1559–1570.
Posner, M. I. (1980). Orienting of Attention. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32, 3–25. doi:10.1080/00335558008248231
Rieth, C. A., & Huber, D. E. (2013). Implicit learning of spatiotemporal contingencies in spatial cueing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 39, 1165–1180.
Roberts, F., & Francis, A. L. (2013). Identifying a temporal threshold of tolerance for silent gaps after requests. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 133, EL471–EL477. doi:10.1121/1.4802900
Roberts, F., Margutti, P., & Takano, S. (2011). Judgments Concerning the Valence of Inter-Turn Silence Across Speakers of American English, Italian, and Japanese. Discourse Processes, 48, 331–354. doi:10.1080/0163853x.2011.558002
Rolke, B. (2008). Temporal preparation facilitates perceptual identification of letters. Perception & Psychophysics, 70, 1305–1313. doi:10.3758/pp. 70.7.1305
Rosenbaum, D. A. (1980). Human movement initiation: Specification of arm, direction, and extent. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 109, 444–474.
Schröter, H., Birngruber, T., Bratzke, D., Miller, J., & Ulrich, R. (2014). Task predictability influences the variable foreperiod effect: Evidence of task-specific temporal preparation. Psychological Research. doi:10.1007/s00426-014-0550-z
Seibold, V. C., Fiedler, A., & Rolke, B. (2011). Temporal attention shortens perceptual latency: A temporal prior entry effect. Psychophysiology, 48, 708–717. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2010.01135.x
Seow, S. C. (2008). Designing and engineering time: The psychology of time perception in software. Upper Saddle River: Addison Wesley.
Shahar, N., Meyer, J., Hildebrandt, M., & Rafaely, V. (2012). Detecting system failures from durations and binary cues. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 70, 552–560.
Simen, P., Balci, F., deSouza, L., Cohen, J. D., & Holmes, P. (2011). A model of interval timing by neural integration. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31, 9238–9253.
Spínola, I., Machado, A., de Carvalho, M. P., & Tonneau, F. (2013). What do humans learn in a double, temporal bisection task: Absolute or relative stimulus durations? Behavioural Processes, 95, 40–49. doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2013.01.003
Steinborn, M. B., Rolke, B., Bratzke, D., & Ulrich, R. (2008). Sequential effects within a short foreperiod context: Evidence for the conditioning account of temporal preparation. Acta Psychologica, 129, 297–307.
Szameitat, A. J., Rummel, J., Szameitat, D. P., & Sterr, A. (2009). Behavioral and emotional consequences of brief delays in human-computer interaction. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 67, 561–570.
Tandonnet, C., Garry, M. I., & Summers, J. J. (2010). Cortical activation during temporal preparation assessed by transcranial magnetic stimulation. Biological Psychology, 85, 481–486. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.08.016
Thomaschke, R., & Dreisbach, G. (2013). Temporal predictability facilitates action, not perception. Psychological Science, 24, 1335–1340. doi:10.1177/0956797612469411
Thomaschke, R., & Dreisbach, G. (2014). The time-event correlation effect is due to temporal expectancy, not to partial repetition costs. Manuscript under revision
Thomaschke, R., & Haering, C. (2014). Predictivity of system delays shortens human response time. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 72, 358–365. doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2013.12.004
Thomaschke, R., Hopkins, B., & Miall, R. C. (2012a). The Planning and Control Model (PCM) of motorvisual priming: Reconciling motorvisual impairment and facilitation effects. Psychological Review, 119, 388–407.
Thomaschke, R., Hopkins, B., & Miall, R. C. (2012b). The role of cue-response mapping in motorvisual impairment and facilitation: Evidence for different roles of action planning and action control in motorvisual dual-task priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38, 336–349. doi:10.1037/a0024794
Thomaschke, R., Kiesel, A., & Hoffmann, J. (2011a). Response specific temporal expectancy: Evidence from a variable foreperiod paradigm. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73, 2309–2322. doi:10.3758/s13414-011-0179-6
Thomaschke, R., Wagener, A., Kiesel, A., & Hoffmann, J. (2011b). The scope and precision of specific temporal expectancy: Evidence from a variable foreperiod paradigm. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73, 953–964. doi:10.3758/s13414-010-0079-1
Thomaschke, R., Wagener, A., Kiesel, A., & Hoffmann, J. (2011c). The specificity of temporal expectancy: Evidence from a variable foreperiod paradigm. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 2289–2300. doi:10.1080/17470218.2011.616212
Wagener, A., & Hoffmann, J. (2010a). Behavioural adaptations to redundant frequency distributions in time. In J. Coull & K. Nobre (Eds.), Attention and Time (pp. 217–226). Oxford: University Press.
Wagener, A., & Hoffmann, J. (2010b). Temporal cueing of target-identity and target-location. Experimental Psychology, 57, 436–445. doi:10.1027/1618-3169/a000054
Watanabe, M., Hirose, K., Den, Y., & Minematsu, N. (2008). Filled pauses as cues to the complexity of upcoming phrases for native and non-native listeners. Speech Communication, 50, 81–94.
Wendt, M., & Kiesel, A. (2011). Conflict adaptation in time: Foreperiods as contextual cues for attentional adjustment. Psychological Bulletin and Review, 18, 910–916.
Wittmann, M. (2013). The inner sense of time: How the brain creates a representation of duration. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 14, 217–223.
Woodrow, H. (1914). The measurement of attention. Psychological Monographs, 17.
Wright, B. A., Buonomano, D. V., Mahncke, H. W., & Merzenich, M. M. (1997). Learning and generalization of auditory temporal-interval discrimination in humans. The Journal of Neuroscience, 17, 3956–3963.
Zentall, T. R. (2007). Temporal discrimination learning by pigeons. Behavioural Processes, 74, 286–292.
Zentall, T. R., Weaver, J., & Clement, T. (2004). Pigeons group time intervals according to their relative duraction. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 113–117.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thomaschke, R., Kunchulia, M. & Dreisbach, G. Time-based event expectations employ relative, not absolute, representations of time. Psychon Bull Rev 22, 890–895 (2015). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0710-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0710-6