Dataset Information

Stuck on a Plateau? A Model-Based Approach to Fundamental Issues in Visual Temporal-Order Judgments.

ABSTRACT: Humans are incapable of judging the temporal order of visual events at brief temporal separations with perfect accuracy. Their performance-which is of much interest in visual cognition and attention research-can be measured with the temporal-order judgment (TOJ) task, which typically produces S-shaped psychometric functions. Occasionally, researchers reported plateaus within these functions, and some theories predict such deviation from the basic S shape. However, the centers of the psychometric functions result from the weakest performance at the most difficult presentations and therefore fluctuate strongly, leaving the existence and exact shapes of plateaus unclear. This study set out to investigate whether plateaus disappear if the data accuracy is enhanced, or if we are "stuck on a plateau", or rather with it. For this purpose, highly accurate data were assessed by model-based analysis. The existence of plateaus is confidently confirmed and two plausible mechanisms derived from very different models are presented. Neither model, however, performs well in the presence of a strong attention manipulation, and model comparison remains unclear on the question of which of the models describes the data best. Nevertheless, the present study includes the highest accuracy in visual TOJ data and the most explicit models of plateaus in TOJ studied so far.

SUBMITTER: Tunnermann J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6835551 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Stuck on a Plateau? A Model-Based Approach to Fundamental Issues in Visual Temporal-Order Judgments.

Tünnermann Jan J Scharlau Ingrid I

Vision (Basel, Switzerland) 20180716 3

Humans are incapable of judging the temporal order of visual events at brief temporal separations with perfect accuracy. Their performance-which is of much interest in visual cognition and attention research-can be measured with the temporal-order judgment (TOJ) task, which typically produces S-shaped psychometric functions. Occasionally, researchers reported plateaus within these functions, and some theories predict such deviation from the basic S shape. However, the centers of the psychometric ...[more]

PMID: 31735892

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Project description:Coordinating spatial perception between body space and its external surrounding space is essential to adapt behaviors to objects, especially when they are noxious. Such coherent multisensory representation of the body extended into external space is conceptualized by the notion of peripersonal reference frame, mapping the portion of space in which somatic and extra-somatic inputs interact closely. Studies on crossmodal interactions between nociception and vision have been scarce. Here we investigated how the perception of visual stimuli, especially those surrounding the body, can be impacted by a nociceptive and potentially harmful stimulus inflicted on a particular body part. In two temporal order judgment tasks, participants judged which of two lateralized visual stimuli, presented either near or far from the body, had been presented first. Visual stimuli were preceded by nociceptive stimuli, either applied unilaterally (on one single hand) or bilaterally (on both hands simultaneously). In Experiment 1 participants' hands were always placed next to the visual stimuli presented near the trunk, while in Experiment 2 they could also be placed next to the visual stimuli presented far from the trunk. In Experiment 1, the presence of unilateral nociceptive stimuli prioritized the perception of visual stimuli presented in the same side of space as the stimulated hand, with a significantly larger effect when visual stimuli were presented near the body than when presented farther away. Experiment 2 showed that these visuospatial biases were related to the spatial congruency between the hand on which nociceptive stimuli were applied and the visual stimuli, independently of the relative distance of both the stimulated hand and the visual stimuli from the trunk. Indeed, nociceptive stimuli mostly impacted the perception of the closest visual stimuli. It is hypothesized that these crossmodal interactions may rely on representations of the space directly surrounding specific body parts.

Project description:A considerable body of sensory research has addressed the rules governing simultaneity judgments (SJs) and temporal order judgments (TOJs). In principle, neural events that register stimulus-arrival-time differences at an early sensory stage could set the limit on SJs and TOJs alike. Alternatively, distinct limits on SJs and TOJs could arise from task-specific neural events occurring after the stimulus-driven stage. To distinguish between these possibilities, we developed a novel reaction-time (RT) measure and tested it in a perceptual-learning procedure. The stimuli comprised dual-stream Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) displays. Participants judged either the simultaneity or temporal order of red-letter and black-number targets presented in opposite lateral hemifield streams of black-letter distractors. Despite identical visual stimulation across-tasks, the SJ and TOJ tasks generated distinct RT patterns. SJs exhibited significantly faster RTs to synchronized targets than to subtly asynchronized targets; TOJs exhibited the opposite RT pattern. These task-specific RT patterns cannot be attributed to the early, stimulus-driven stage and instead match what one would predict if the limits on SJs and TOJs arose from task-specific decision spaces. That is, synchronized targets generate strong evidence for simultaneity, which hastens SJ RTs. By contrast, synchronized targets provide no information about temporal order, which slows TOJ RTs. Subtly asynchronizing the targets reverses this information pattern, and the corresponding RT patterns. In addition to investigating RT patterns, we also investigated training-transfer between the tasks. Training to improve SJ precision failed to improve TOJ precision, and vice versa, despite identical visual stimulation across tasks. This, too, argues against early, stimulus-driven limits on SJs and TOJs. Taken together, the present study offers novel evidence that distinct rules set the limits on SJs and TOJs.

Dataset Information

Stuck on a Plateau? A Model-Based Approach to Fundamental Issues in Visual Temporal-Order Judgments.

Publications

Stuck on a Plateau? A Model-Based Approach to Fundamental Issues in Visual Temporal-Order Judgments.

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