Short-term memory of temporal information revisited

Previous studies provided diverging evidence regarding modality specificity of temporal information in short-term memory. Some authors reported modality-specific interference effects on visual and auditory duration discrimination, whereas others observed crossmodal interference effects. One reason for these diverging results could be different trade-offs between the temporal discrimination task and the interference task in these studies. Therefore, this study re-examined these effects with interference tasks (speeded color/pitch change discrimination) that were especially suited to assess potential trade-offs between the primary and the secondary tasks. The results showed that the auditory interference task selectively impaired discrimination performance for auditory durations, whereas the visual interference task proved to be inefficient as interference task. The present results agree best with an account that suggests a modality-specific representation of temporal information in short-term memory.

[1]  Richard D. Morey,et al.  Confidence Intervals from Normalized Data: A correction to Cousineau (2005) , 2008 .

[2]  M. Treisman.  Temporal discrimination and the indifference interval. Implications for a model of the "internal clock". , 1963, Psychological monographs.

[3]  J. Grier,et al.  Nonparametric indexes for sensitivity and bias: computing formulas. , 1971, Psychological bulletin.

[4]  Simon Grondin,et al.  Duration discrimination of empty and filled intervals marked by auditory and visual signals , 1993, Perception & psychophysics.

[5]  R. Ulrich,et al.  Perceptual learning in temporal discrimination: asymmetric cross-modal transfer from audition to vision , 2012, Experimental Brain Research.

[6]  R. Ulrich,et al.  Representations of temporal information in short-term memory: Are they modality-specific? , 2016, Acta psychologica.

[7]  André Vandierendonck,et al.  Duration estimation and the phonological loop: Articulatory suppression and irrelevant sounds , 2006, Psychological research.

[8]  Doris Aaronson,et al.  Extensions of Grier's computational formulas for A' and B'' to below-chance performance. , 1987 .

[9]  Randolph Blake,et al.  Hearing What the Eyes See , 2005, Psychological science.

[10]  Karl Christoph Klauer,et al.  Double dissociations in visual and spatial short-term memory. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[11]  R. Ulrich,et al.  Temporal reproduction within and across senses: Testing the supramodal property of the pacemaker-counter model. , 2019, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[12]  C. Douglas Creelman,et al.  Human Discrimination of Auditory Duration , 1962 .

[13]  J. Wearden,et al.  When do auditory/visual differences in duration judgements occur? , 2006, Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[14]  Dean V Buonomano,et al.  Book Review: How Do We Tell Time? , 2002, The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry.

[15]  D. H. Warren,et al.  Immediate perceptual response to intersensory discrepancy. , 1980, Psychological bulletin.

[16]  Rolf Ulrich,et al.  No evidence for qualitative differences in the processing of short and long temporal intervals. , 2005, Acta psychologica.

[17]  D H Brainard,et al.  The Psychophysics Toolbox. , 1997, Spatial vision.

[18]  Judith Haldemann,et al.  Auditory and visual temporal sensitivity: evidence for a hierarchical structure of modality-specific and modality-independent levels of temporal information processing , 2011, Psychological Research.

[19]  Heinrich René Liesefeld,et al.  Combining speed and accuracy to control for speed-accuracy trade-offs(?) , 2018, Behavior Research Methods.

[20]  Denis G. Pelli,et al.  ECVP '07 Abstracts , 2007, Perception.

[21]  Ryota Kanai,et al.  Modality-independent role of the primary auditory cortex in time estimation , 2011, Experimental Brain Research.

[22]  R M Church,et al.  Scalar Timing in Memory , 1984, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[23]  John E. Schlerf,et al.  Dedicated and intrinsic models of time perception , 2008, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[24]  D. Picard,et al.  Short-term memory for auditory and visual durations: evidence for selective interference effects , 2011, Psychological Research.

[25]  Rolf Ulrich,et al.  Crossmodal temporal discrimination: Assessing the predictions of a general pacemaker-counter model , 2006, Perception & psychophysics.

[26]  R. Ulrich,et al.  Temporal sequence discrimination within and across senses: do we really hear what we see? , 2019, Experimental Brain Research.

[27]  A Baddeley,et al.  Working memory. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning andmotivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47-89). , 1974 .