Stimulus Range Effects in Temporal Bisection by Humans

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Abstract
Two experiments with human subjects, using short-duration tones as stimuli to be judged, investigated the effect of the range of the stimulus set on temporal bisection performance. In Experiment 1, six groups of subjects were tested on a temporal bisection task, where each stimulus had to be classified as “short” or “long”. For three groups, the difference between the longest (L) and shortest (S) durations in the to-be-bisected stimulus set was kept constant at 400 msec, and the L / S ratio was varied over values of 5:1 and 2:1. For three other groups, the L/S ratio was kept constant at 4:1 but the L-S difference varied from 300 to 600 msec. The bisection point (the stimulus value resulting in 50% “long” responses) was located closer to the arithmetic mean of L and S than the geometric mean for all groups except that for which the L / S ratio was 2:1, in which case geometric mean bisection was found. In Experiment 2, stimuli were spaced between L and S either linearly or logarithmically, and the L / S ratio took values of either 2:1 or 19:1. Geometric mean bisection was found in both cases when the L / S ratio was 2:1, but effects of stimulus spacing were found only when the L / S ratio was 19:1. Overall, the results supported a previous conjecture that the L / S ratio used in a bisection task played a critical role in determining the behaviour obtained. A theoretical model of bisection advanced by Wearden (1991) dealt appropriately with bisection point shifts discussed above but encountered difficulties with stimulus spacing effects.

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