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Time perception in the range of milliseconds to a few seconds is essential for many important sensory and perceptual tasks including speech perception, motion perception, motor coordination, and cross-modal interaction. For the brain to be in synchrony with the environment, the physical differences in the speeds of light and sound, as well as stimuli from other modalities such as odors, must be processed and coordinated (Pöppel & Bao 2014; Bao et al., 2015). Time is a subjective feeling that is modulated by emotional states which trigger temporal distortions (temporal dilation vs. contraction) (Wittmann et al., 2014), hence give rise to subjective time that may be different to event time as initially registered in the brain. Recent research suggests that time perception in a multisensory world is subject to prior task experience and shaped by (statistical) learning processes. Humans are active learners. That is, the engagement of the own body in a timing task within a perceptual-action loop will make a noticeable difference in timing performance, as compared to when humans only passively perceive the same perceptual scenario (Bao et al., 2015; Chen & Vroomen, 2013). This Research Topic of “Sub-and Supra-Second Timing: Brain, Learning and Development” has integrated sixteen submissions of novel research on sub- and supra-timing. We have categorized the papers in this topic into the following four themes, from which we can deduce trends of research about multisensory timing in the sub- and supra-second range:Sensory timing, interaction and reliabilityAdaptive representation of time, learning and temporal predictionSensorimotor synchronization, embodiment and coordinationPerspective of psychological moment and temporal organizationOverall, the collections in “Sub-and Supra-Second Timing: Brain, Learning and Development” show some recent trends and debates in multisensory timing research as well as provide a venue to inspire future work in multisensory timing.
Subjective time --- Time Perception --- time coordination --- movement timing --- timing mechanisms
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The problem of how humans and other intelligent systems construct causal representations from non-causal perceptual evidence has occupied scholars in cognitive science for many decades. Most contemporary approaches agree with David Hume that patterns of covariation between two events of interest are the critical input to the causal induction engine, irrespective of whether this induction is believed to be grounded in the formation of associations (Shanks & Dickinson, 1987), rule-based evaluation (White, 2004), appraisal of causal powers (Cheng, 1997), or construction of Bayesian Causal Networks (Pearl, 2000). Recent research, however, has repeatedly demonstrated that an exclusive focus on covariation while neglecting contiguity (another of Hume's cues) results in ecologically invalid models of causal inference. Temporal spacing, order, variability, predictability, and patterning all have profound influence on the type of causal representation that is constructed. The influence of time upon causal representations could be seen as a bottom-up constraint (though current bottom-up models cannot account for the full spectrum of effects). However, causal representations in turn also constrain the perception of time: Put simply, two causally related events appear closer in subjective time than two (equidistant) unrelated events. This reversal of Hume's conjecture, referred to as Causal Binding (Buehner & Humphreys, 2009) is a top-down constraint, and suggests that our representations of time and causality are mutually influencing one another. At present, the theoretical implications of this phenomenon are not yet fully understood. Some accounts link it exclusively to human motor planning (appealing to mechanisms of cross-modal temporal adaptation, or forward learning models of motor control). However, recent demonstrations of causal binding in the absence of human action, and analogous binding effects in the visual spatial domain, challenge such accounts in favour of Bayesian Evidence Integration. This Research Topic reviews and further explores the nature of the mutual influence between time and causality, how causal knowledge is constructed in the context of time, and how it in turn shapes and alters our perception of time. We draw together literatures from the perception and cognitive science, as well as experimental and theoretical papers. Contributions investigate the neural bases of binding and causal learning/perception, methodological advances, and functional implications of causal learning and perception in real time.
causality --- time --- Time Perception --- perceptual causality --- binding --- contiguity --- contingency --- Judgment --- cognitive development --- sensory integration
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Researchers working in many fields of psychology and neuroscience are interested in the temporal structure of experience, as well as the experience of time, at scales of a few milliseconds up to a few seconds as well as days, months, years, and beyond. This Research Topic supposes that broadly speaking, the field of "time psychology" can be organized by distinguishing between "perceptual" and "conceptual" time-scales. Dealing with conceptual time: "mental time travel," also called mental simulation, self-projection, episodic-semantic memory, prospection/foresight, allows humans (and perhaps other animals) to imagine and plan events and experiences in their personal futures, based in large part on memories of their personal pasts, as well as general knowledge. Moreover, contents of human language and thought are fundamentally organized by a temporal dimension, enmeshed with it so thoroughly that it is usually expressible only through spatial metaphors. But what might such notions have to do with experienced durations of events lasting milliseconds up to a few seconds, during the so-called "present moment" of perception-action cycle time? This Research Topic is organized around the general premise that, by considering how mental time travel might "scale down" to time perception (and vice-versa, no less), progress and integrative synthesis within- and across- scientific domains might be facilitated. Bipolar configurations of future- and past-orientations of the self may be repeated in parallel across conceptual and perceptual time-scales, subsumed by a general "Janus-like" feedforward-feedback system for goal-pursuit. As an example, it is notable that the duality of "prospection" and semantic-episodic memory operating at conceptual time-scales has an analogue in perception-action cycle time, namely the interplay of anticipatory attention and working memory. Authors from all areas of psychology and neuroscience are encouraged to submit articles of any format accepted by the journal (Original Research, Methods, Hypothesis & Theory, Reviews, etc.), which might speak to questions about time and temporal phenomena at long and/or short time-scales.
Time Perception --- Attention --- Consciousness --- episodic memory --- prospection --- working memory --- mental time travel --- mind wandering
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From the moment of birth, humans and animals are immersed in time: all experiences and actions evolve in time and are dynamically structured. The perception of time is thus a capacity indispensable for the control of perception, cognition and action. The last 10 years have witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in timing and time perception, with a continuously increasing number of researchers exploring these innate abilities. However, existing robotic systems largely neglect the key role of time in cognition and action. This is a major barrier for accomplishing the long-term goal of symbiotic human-robot interaction. The critical question is: how is time instantiated in a biological system and how can it be implemented in an artificial system? Recent years have for example seen an increasing focus on the relationship between affective states and the experience of time. The influence of affective states on subjective time seems to depend on the embodiment of emotions: intertwined affective and interoceptive states may create our subjective experience of time. Since robotic systems are in essence embodied information-processing systems that interact with the real world, we hope to inspire a reciprocal exchange of ideas between the field of Robotics and the Cognitive Neurosciences. In this research topic, we call researchers from different disciplines (Robotics, Neurosciences, and Psychology) to present their empirical work, their models or reviews on the question of how time judgments are instantiated in biological and artificial systems. Of particular interest are papers on time perception in humans and animals, with a focused interest on embodied time perception, i.e. the influence of affective and body states on time judgments. Moreover, the present Research Topic seeks to gather papers discussing the key role of time on different aspects of robotic cognition as well as modeling approaches. We are interested in paving the way for a new generation of intelligent computational systems that incorporate the sense of time in their processing loop and thus accomplish more efficient and more advanced cognitive capacities.
Time Perception --- Embodied Cognition --- synchronization --- timing --- temporal processing --- artificial cognitive systems --- emotion
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One fundamental topic of scientific inquiry in psychology is the study of what William James called the 'stream of consciousness', our ongoing experience of the world and ourselves from within—our inner experiences. These internal states (aka "stimulus-independent thoughts") include inner speech, mental imagery, feelings, sensory awareness, internally produced sounds or music, unsymbolized thinking, and mentalizing (thinking about others' mental states). They may occur automatically during mind-wandering (daydreaming) and resting-state episodes, and may focus on one's past, present, or future ("mental time travel" - e.g., autonoetic consciousness). Inner experiences also may take the form of intrusive or ruminative thoughts. The types, characteristics, frequency, content, and functions of inner experiences have been studied using a variety of traditional methods, among which questionnaires, thought listing procedures (i.e., open-ended self-reports), thinking aloud techniques, and daily dairies. Another approach, articulatory suppression, consists in blocking participants' use of verbal thinking while completing a given task; deficits indicate that inner speech plays a causal role in normal task completion. Various thought sampling approaches have also been developed in an effort to gather more ecologically valid data. Previous thought sampling studies have relied on beepers that signal participants to report aspects of their inner experiences at random intervals. More recent studies are exploiting smartphone technology to easily and reliably probe randomly occurring inner experiences in large samples of participants. These various measures have allowed researchers to learn some fundamental facts about inner experiences. To illustrate, it is becoming increasingly clear that prospection (future-oriented thinking) greatly depends on access to autobiographical memory (past-oriented thinking), where recollection of past scenes is used as a template to formulate plausible future scenarios. The main goal of the present Research Topic was to offer a scientific platform for the dissemination of current high-quality research pertaining to inner experiences. Although data on all forms of inner experiences were welcome, reports on recent advances in inner speech research were particularly encouraged. Here are some examples of topics of interest: (1) description and validation of new scales, inventories, questionnaires measuring any form of inner experience; (2) novel uses or improvements of existing measures of inner experiences; (3) development of new smartphone technology facilitating or broadening the use of cell phones to sample inner experiences; (4) frequency, content, and functions of various inner experience; (5) correlations between personality or cognitive variables and any aspects of inner experiences; (6) philosophical or theoretical considerations pertaining to inner experiences; and (7) inner experience changes with age.
resting state --- mind wandering --- inner speech --- unsymbolized thinking --- autobiography --- self-consciousness --- Time Perception --- fMRI --- Thought sampling --- Self-report scales
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Human speech and music share a number of similarities and differences. One of the closest similarities is their temporal nature as both (i) develop over time, (ii) form sequences of temporal intervals, possibly differing in duration and acoustical marking by different spectral properties, which are perceived as a rhythm, and (iii) generate metrical expectations. Human brains are particularly efficient in perceiving, producing, and processing fine rhythmic information in music and speech. However a number of critical questions remain to be answered: Where does this human sensitivity for rhythm arise? How did rhythm cognition develop in human evolution? How did environmental rhythms affect the evolution of brain rhythms? Which rhythm-specific neural circuits are shared between speech and music, or even with other domains? Evolutionary processes’ long time scales often prevent direct observation: understanding the psychology of rhythm and its evolution requires a close-fitting integration of different perspectives. First, empirical observations of music and speech in the field are contrasted and generate testable hypotheses. Experiments exploring linguistic and musical rhythm are performed across sensory modalities, ages, and animal species to address questions about domain-specificity, development, and an evolutionary path of rhythm. Finally, experimental insights are integrated via synthetic modeling, generating testable predictions about brain oscillations underlying rhythm cognition and its evolution. Our understanding of the cognitive, neurobiological, and evolutionary bases of rhythm is rapidly increasing. However, researchers in different fields often work on parallel, potentially converging strands with little mutual awareness. This research topic builds a bridge across several disciplines, focusing on the cognitive neuroscience of rhythm as an evolutionary process. It includes contributions encompassing, although not limited to: (1) developmental and comparative studies of rhythm (e.g. critical acquisition periods, innateness); (2) evidence of rhythmic behavior in other species, both spontaneous and in controlled experiments; (3) comparisons of rhythm processing in music and speech (e.g. behavioral experiments, systems neuroscience perspectives on music-speech networks); (4) evidence on rhythm processing across modalities and domains; (5) studies on rhythm in interaction and context (social, affective, etc.); (6) mathematical and computational (e.g. connectionist, symbolic) models of “rhythmicity” as an evolved behavior.
rhythm --- meter --- synchrony --- interval timing --- time perception --- beat perception --- music --- speech --- movement --- evolution of speech and language --- evolution of cognition
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Mental chronometry encompasses all aspects of time processing in the nervous system and constitutes a standard tool in many disciplines including theoretical and experimental psychology and human neuroscience. Mental chronometry has represented a fundamental approach to elucidate the time course of many cognitive phenomena and their underlying neural circuits over more than a century. Nowadays, mental chronometry continues evolving and expanding our knowledge, and our understanding of the temporal organization of the brain in combination with different neuroscience techniques and advanced methods in mathematical analysis. In research on mental chronometry, human reaction/responses times play a central role. Together with reaction times, other topics in mental chronometry include vocal, manual and saccadic latencies, subjective time, psychological time, interval timing, time perception, internal clock, time production, time representation, time discrimination, time illusion, temporal summation, temporal integration, temporal judgment, redundant signals effect, perceptual, decision and motor time, etc. The aim of this research topic is to provide an overview of the state of the art in this field?its relevance, recent findings, current challenges, perspectives and future directions. Thus, as a result, a collection of 14 original research and opinion papers from different experts have been gathered together in a single volume.
mental chronometry --- Simple and choice reaction time --- Timing and Time perception --- Sensory Perception --- Cognition --- human performance --- variability --- power laws --- stochastic models --- Decision Making
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