Asymmetries in visuomotor recalibration of time perception: Does causal binding distort the window of integration?

Asymmetries in visuomotor recalibration of time perception: Does causal binding distort the window of integration? M Rohde, L Greiner, M Ernst
Cognitive Neurosciences, Bielefeld University, Germany Contact: marieke.rohde@uni-bielefeld.de
There is a causal asymmetry in visuomotor timing depending on which modality leads the temporal order; a lagging visual stimulus may be interpreted as causally linked sensory feedback, a leading visual stimulus not. We tested whether this asymmetry leads to directional asymmetries in temporal recalibration of an interval estimation task. Participants were trained with three temporal discrepancies between a motor action (button press) and a visual stimulus (flashed disk): 100ms vision-lead, simultaneity, and 100ms movement-lead. They then estimated a range of intervals between flash and press by adjusting a point on a visual scale. We found that temporal recalibration occurs nearly exclusively on the movement-lead side of the range of discrepancies (uni-lateral lengthening or shortening of the window of temporal integration), but no asymmetries in recalibration of the point of subjective simultaneity (PSS) or discriminability. This seeming contradiction (symmetrical recalibration of PSS, asymmetrical recalibration of interval estimation) poses a challenge to models of temporal order perception that assume a time measurement process with Gaussian noise. Simulations of a two-criterion model of temporal integration illustrate that a possible compressive bias around perceived simultaneity (temporal integration) even prior to perceptual decisions about order/simultaneity would be difficult to detect in the responses.

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