Stimulus duration has little effect on auditory, visual and audiovisual temporal order judgement

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Sensory Perception

Background:

• Classical studies proposed a single central process for temporal order judgments (TOJ).
• Current theories suggest modality-specific timing followed by cross-modal integration.
• Investigating the role of stimulus duration in TOJ is crucial for understanding timing mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if unisensory stimulus duration influences cross-modal TOJ.
• To test the hypothesis that TOJ is mainly determined by stimulus onsets.
• To compare unisensory and cross-modal temporal discrimination.

Main Methods:

• Participants performed TOJ tasks with unisensory (auditory, visual) and multisensory stimuli.
• Stimuli varied in duration (10, 40, 500 ms) and onset asynchrony.
• Psychometric functions were measured by judging which of two stimuli, presented laterally, started first.

Main Results:

• Stimulus duration had minimal impact on TOJ, supporting an onset-based mechanism.
• Cross-modal just noticeable differences in timing were consistently larger than unisensory ones.
• Results align with models positing post-estimation cross-modal comparison.

Conclusions:

• Temporal order judgments are predominantly influenced by stimulus onsets.
• Cross-modal temporal perception relies on integrating information after individual modality timing.
• The findings support the prevalent view of sequential modality-specific timing and cross-modal comparison.