The College of William and Mary, Department of Psychology, 540 Landrum Dr., Williamsburg, VA 23185, United States of America.
Neuropsychologia. 2013 Jan;51(2):191-6. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2012.09.001. Epub 2012 Sep 10.
Decision processes related to interval timing are commonly examined using the duration bisection procedure-a well-established timekeeping task in which participants make judgments about whether a series of "probes" are closer in duration to a "short" anchor duration or a "long" anchor duration. The specific information used during bisection categorization has been a subject of debate. Recent research involving the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) suggests that the "short" anchor duration and a value near the geometric mean (GM) of the short and long anchors are among the critical pieces of information used during bisection categorization judgements. The present study examined a corollary of this claim, that memory comparison and decision-making processes related to the temporal judgments are completed prior to probe offset when probe durations are perceived to be "long;" testing the hypotheses that (1) response times would be significantly longer for "short" relative to "long" categorizations and that (2) there would be significant differences in ERPs time-locked to probe offset between probes judged to be "short" and "long." Both of these predictions were realized in the results, providing strong support for the assertion that a value near the GM-likely the point of subjective equality (PSE)-is among the critical information used during bisection categorization judgments.
与区间定时相关的决策过程通常通过二分程序来检查，这是一种经过充分验证的计时任务，参与者通过判断一系列“探针”与“短”锚定时间或“长”锚定时间的接近程度来进行判断。在二分归类过程中使用的具体信息一直存在争议。最近涉及条件负变（CNV）的研究表明，在二分归类判断中，“短”锚定时间和接近短时间和长时间的几何平均值（GM）的值是使用的关键信息之一。本研究检验了这一说法的推论，即在感知探针持续时间“长”时，与时间判断相关的记忆比较和决策过程在探针结束前完成；测试了以下假设：（1）相对于“长”分类，“短”分类的反应时间会显著延长，（2）在判断为“短”和“长”的探针之间，与探针结束时间锁定的 ERP 会有显著差异。这两个预测在结果中都得到了实现，这为一个接近 GM（可能是主观相等点，PSE）的值是在二分归类判断中使用的关键信息之一的说法提供了强有力的支持。
