The minimum duration of a perception.

Abstract The time course of the perception of visual and auditory stimuli has been studied by means of an analysis of the temporal errors in the judgement of simultaneity of two stimuli. In the first experiment, the subject is required to report when the onsets of two stimuli (of different durations) are simultaneous. In the second experiment, the subject is required to report when the offset of one stimulus is simultaneous with the onset of the second stimulus. The results indicate that visual perceptions have a minimum duration which lies in the range of 120–240 msec, and that auditory perceptions have a minimum duration which lies in the range of 120–170 msec.