Duration reproduction with sensory feedback delay: differential involvement of perception and action time

Abstract

Previous research has shown that voluntary action can attract subsequent, delayed feedback events toward the action, and adaptation to the sensorimotor delay can even reverse motor-sensory temporal order judgments. However, whether and how sensorimotor delay affects duration reproduction is still unclear. To investigate this, we injected an onset- or offset-delay to the sensory feedback signal from a duration reproduction task. We compared duration reproductions within (visual, auditory) modality and across audiovisual modalities with feedback signal onset- and offset-delay manipulations. We found that the reproduced duration was lengthened in both visual and auditory feedback signal onset-delay conditions. The lengthening effect was evident immediately, on the first trial with the onset-delay. However, when the onset of the feedback signal was prior to the action, the lengthening effect was diminished. In contrast, a shortening effect was found with feedback signal offset-delay, though the effect was weaker and manifested only in the auditory offset-delay condition. These findings indicate that participants tend to mix the onset of action and the feedback signal more when the feedback is delayed, and they heavily rely on motor-stop signals for the duration reproduction. Furthermore, auditory duration was overestimated compared to visual duration in crossmodal feedback conditions, and the overestimation of auditory duration (or the underestimation of visual duration) was independent of the delay manipulation.

Keywords: action; audition; time perception; time reproduction; vision.

Figure 1

Schematic illustration of the experimental design. A standard duration reproduction paradigm with manipulation of feedback delays during reproduction. An auditory or visual stimulus is presented first as a standard duration. Participants reproduce the standard by pressing a button. Another auditory or visual stimulus is fed back to participants based on the action. The feedback signal could be synchronous to the key press (A synchronous-feedback condition), or be delayed 200 ms at the onset of the feedback but simultaneously stops at button release (B onset-delay feedback condition), or starts synchronously with the button press but stops 200 ms after the button release (C offset-delay feedback condition).

Figure 2

Mean reproduction times (and associated standard errors) from all synchronous trials for all five experiments. Blue bars depict produced durations after short standard stimuli (800 ms); red bars indicate reproduction times after long standard stimuli (1200 ms) (^* indicates p < 0.01).

Figure 3

Normalized reproduction errors [(subjective duration—physical duration)/physical duration] for the onset- and offset-delay condition of Experiment 1 (A) and Experiment 2 (B). In the upper and middle panels trial-wise dynamic changes of normalized reproduction are shown. Four trials from the synchronous block before the delay manipulation (baseline phase), delay block (delay phase), and four trials after the delay manipulation (post phase) are displayed. The black lines indicate the physical delay. The red dashed curves and circles depict mean normalized reproduction errors as a function of trial sequence and the onset-delay (up-panel) or offset-delay (middle panel). In the low-panels mean normalized reproduction errors (and associated standard errors) are plotted against baseline, delay and post phase for the onset- and offset-delay conditions.

Figure 4

Normalized reproduction errors for the onset- and offset-delay condition of Experiment 3 (A) and Experiment 4 (B). In the upper and middle panels trial-wise dynamic changes of normalized reproduction are shown. Four trials from the synchronous block before the delay manipulation (baseline phase), delay block (delay phase), and four trials after the delay manipulation (post phase) are displayed. The black lines indicate the physical delay. The red dashed curves and circles depict mean normalized reproduction errors as a function of trial sequence and the onset-delay (up-panel) or offset-delay (middle panel). In the low-panels mean normalized reproduction errors (and associated standard errors) are plotted against baseline, delay, and post phase for the onset- and offset-delay conditions. The dashed line indicates the mean normalized reproduction error in the baseline condition.

Figure 5

Normalized reproduction errors and linear regression lines (red) for the onset (left side) and offset (right side) manipulation conditions from a typical dataset. In the onset-manipulation condition, the fitted slope for the feedback signal started before the action onset (0.06) is not significant different from zero, while the slope for the delayed feedback (1.07) is significant higher than zero. In the offset-manipulation condition the slope is 0.30, significantly higher than zero.