Still stuck with the stopwatch

Time is an integral part of all adaptive behavior; we continuously adapt to the dynamic structure of an ever-changing environment. Recent theoretical approaches have moved from the idea that time arises from specialized stopwatch-like mechanisms, instead proposing the view that time is inherently encoded in a host of neural dynamics. However, we argue that much of our theorizing is-even when an intrinsic view is proposed-still driven by the implicit assumption that clearly marked, isolated stopwatch-like intervals are the fundamental unit of time in our environment. This assumption ignores the challenges of interacting with an uncertain, ever-changing environment: (a) Relevant intervals need to be distilled from a continuous stream of actions and events, and (b) time is never estimated for its own sake but instead used to adaptively tune cognition. We discuss an "intrinsic-adaptive" view that, in contrast to studying isolated stopwatch intervals, considers how organisms learn and adapt behavior to temporal structures from experience in natural worlds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).