AUTHOR=Nikolov Stanislav , Rahnev Dobromir A., Lau Hakwan C.

TITLE=Probabilistic Model of Onset Detection Explains Paradoxes in Human Time Perception

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=1

YEAR=2010

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00037

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00037

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>A very basic computational model is proposed to explain two puzzling findings in the time perception literature. First, spontaneous motor actions are preceded by up to 1–2 s of preparatory activity (Kornhuber and Deecke, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B16">1965</xref>). Yet, subjects are only consciously aware of about a quarter of a second of motor preparation (Libet et al., <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B19">1983</xref>). Why are they not aware of the early part of preparation? Second, psychophysical findings (Spence et al., <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B27">2001</xref>) support the principle of attention prior entry (Titchener, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B30">1908</xref>), which states that attended stimuli are perceived faster than unattended stimuli. However, electrophysiological studies reported no or little corresponding temporal difference between the neural signals for attended and unattended stimuli (McDonald et al., <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B21">2005</xref>; Vibell et al., <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="B32">2007</xref>). We suggest that the key to understanding these puzzling findings is to think of onset detection in probabilistic terms. The two apparently paradoxical phenomena are naturally predicted by our signal detection theoretic model.</p>