Auditory Feedback Assists Post hoc Error Correction of Temporal Reproduction, and Perception of Self-Produced Time Intervals in Subsecond Range

Abstract

We examined whether auditory feedback assists the post hoc error correction of temporal reproduction, and the perception of self-produced time intervals in the subsecond and suprasecond ranges. Here, we employed a temporal reproduction task with a single motor response at a point in time with and without auditory feedback. This task limits participants to reducing errors by employing auditory feedback in a post hoc manner. Additionally, the participants were asked to judge the self-produced timing in this task. The results showed that, in the presence of auditory feedback, the participants exhibited smaller variability and bias in terms of temporal reproduction and the perception of self-produced time intervals in the subsecond range but not in the suprasecond range. Furthermore, in the presence of auditory feedback, the positive serial dependency of temporal reproduction, which is the tendency of reproduced intervals to be similar to those in adjacent trials, was reduced in the subsecond range but not in the suprasecond range. These results suggest that auditory feedback assists the post hoc error correction of temporal reproduction, and the perception of self-produced time intervals in the subsecond range.

Keywords: auditory feedback; self-produced timing; subsecond range; suprasecond range; time perception; time reproduction.

FIGURE 1

Schematic illustration of trial structure. In the auditory-feedback condition, after participants had listened to three successive tones with two base intervals, they pressed a button to make the interval between the button-press and the last of the three tones subjectively equal to the base interval, and judged whether their button-press was earlier or later than the isochronous timing. In this condition, a feedback tone was immediately presented with the participants’ button-press. In the no-auditory-feedback condition, the task is identical to the auditory-feedback condition. The difference from the auditory-feedback condition is that the feedback tone was not presented.

FIGURE 2

Reproduction performance. (A) The SDs of produced intervals divided by their base intervals are represented for each participant by the dots. The colored circles and lines represent the mean across participants and the standard error of the mean, respectively. (B) The mean produced intervals divided by their base intervals. (C) The absolute differences divided by their base intervals between the mean produced intervals and their base intervals.

FIGURE 3

Perception performance. (A) The estimated psychometric functions and the data for pairs consisting of produced interval and judgment of the 14 participants are displayed. The darker and lighter colors indicate auditory feedback and no auditory feedback conditions, respectively. (B) The JNDs divided by their base intervals are displayed in the same manner as the reproduction performance. (C) The PSEs divided by their base intervals. (D) The absolute differences divided by their base intervals between the PSEs and their base intervals.

FIGURE 4

The lag-1 autocorrelations of produced intervals are displayed in the same manner as the reproduction and perception performances.