Perception and production of temporal intervals across a range of durations: evidence for a common timing mechanism

Abstract

Study participants performed time perception and production tasks over a set of 4 intervals ranging from 325 to 550 ms. In 3 experiments, variability on both the production and perception tasks was found to be linearly related to the square of the target intervals. If the perception and production of short temporal intervals use a common timing mechanism, the slopes of the functions for the 2 tasks should be identical. The results of Experiment 1 failed to support this prediction. However, when the 2 tasks were made more similar by providing a single (Experiment 2) or multiple (Experiment 3) presentations of the target interval per judgment or production, the perception and production functions were nearly identical. The results suggest that temporal judgments and productions are based on an integrated internal representation of the target interval rather than reference to an internal oscillatory process.