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<p>What mechanisms underlie the human sense of time? This paper demonstrates, using the examples of two of the author’s empirical studies, how classical psychophysical methods can be employed to explore how humans process and represent temporal information. A&#xa0;prominent finding in psychophysics in this respect is that judgments about time durations depend on the order of the stimuli being evaluated. For example, sensitivity in discrimination tasks is typically higher when a&#xa0;constant standard stimulus precedes a&#xa0;variable comparison stimulus, rather than following it (standard position effect or TypeB-Effect). The Internal Reference Model (IRM) posits, for example, that participants rely on an internal reference in their judgment, which is continuously updated as a&#xa0;conglomerate of representations of current and past stimulus instances. The paper discusses studies that delineate the scope of the model and further investigate the nature of the internal reference as proposed by the model. On the one hand, the IRM proves to be a&#xa0;universal model of stimulus discrimination, as a&#xa0;specific prediction of the model (standard position effect) could also be observed for various nontemporal stimulus attributes (e.g., intensity, frequency) across different modalities. The formation of an internal reference thus appears to be a&#xa0;general component of human perceptual performances. On the other hand, it is shown that people rely to a&#xa0;lesser extent on the internal reference in their judgments when the last update of this reference occurred longer ago. The internal reference thus turns out to be a&#xa0;perceptual memory representation that is subject to temporal decay.</p>

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Von der Erfahrung zur Empirie – Zur Psychophysik der Zeit

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年7月9日

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  • Ruben Ellinghaus

摘要

What mechanisms underlie the human sense of time? This paper demonstrates, using the examples of two of the author’s empirical studies, how classical psychophysical methods can be employed to explore how humans process and represent temporal information. A prominent finding in psychophysics in this respect is that judgments about time durations depend on the order of the stimuli being evaluated. For example, sensitivity in discrimination tasks is typically higher when a constant standard stimulus precedes a variable comparison stimulus, rather than following it (standard position effect or TypeB-Effect). The Internal Reference Model (IRM) posits, for example, that participants rely on an internal reference in their judgment, which is continuously updated as a conglomerate of representations of current and past stimulus instances. The paper discusses studies that delineate the scope of the model and further investigate the nature of the internal reference as proposed by the model. On the one hand, the IRM proves to be a universal model of stimulus discrimination, as a specific prediction of the model (standard position effect) could also be observed for various nontemporal stimulus attributes (e.g., intensity, frequency) across different modalities. The formation of an internal reference thus appears to be a general component of human perceptual performances. On the other hand, it is shown that people rely to a lesser extent on the internal reference in their judgments when the last update of this reference occurred longer ago. The internal reference thus turns out to be a perceptual memory representation that is subject to temporal decay.