Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat, 5, 40127, Bologna, Italy.
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia, 8, 35131, Padova, Italy.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2024 May;86(4):1386-1399. doi: 10.3758/s13414-023-02773-7. Epub 2023 Sep 6.
The brain continuously encodes information about time, but how sensorial channels interact to achieve a stable representation of such ubiquitous information still needs to be determined. According to recent research, children show a potential interference in multisensory conditions, leading to a trade-off between two senses (sight and audition) when considering time-perception tasks. This study aimed to examine how healthy young adults behave when performing a time-perception task. In Experiment 1, we tested the effects of temporary sensory deprivation on both visual and auditory senses in a group of young adults. In Experiment 2, we compared the temporal performances of young adults in the auditory modality with those of two samples of children (sighted and sighted but blindfolded) selected from a previous study. Statistically significant results emerged when comparing the two pathways: young adults overestimated and showed a higher sensitivity to time in the auditory modality compared to the visual modality. Restricting visual and auditory input did not affect their time sensitivity. Moreover, children were more accurate at estimating time than young adults after a transient visual deprivation. This implies that as we mature, sensory deprivation does not constitute a benefit to time perception, and supports the hypothesis of a calibration process between senses with age. However, more research is needed to determine how this calibration process affects the developmental trajectories of time perception.
大脑不断对时间信息进行编码，但感觉通道如何相互作用以实现对这种无处不在的信息的稳定表示，仍有待确定。根据最近的研究，儿童在多感官条件下表现出潜在的干扰，导致在考虑时间感知任务时，两种感觉（视觉和听觉）之间存在权衡。本研究旨在探讨健康的年轻成年人在执行时间感知任务时的表现。在实验 1 中，我们测试了一组年轻成年人在暂时感觉剥夺条件下对视觉和听觉的影响。在实验 2 中，我们将年轻成年人在听觉模式下的时间表现与之前研究中选择的两个儿童样本（视力正常和视力正常但蒙住眼睛）进行了比较。当比较两种途径时出现了具有统计学意义的结果：与视觉模式相比，年轻成年人在听觉模式下高估了时间并表现出更高的时间敏感性。限制视觉和听觉输入不会影响他们的时间敏感性。此外，在短暂的视觉剥夺后，儿童比年轻成年人更准确地估计时间。这意味着随着年龄的增长，感觉剥夺不会对时间感知产生益处，并支持了随着年龄的增长，感觉之间进行校准的假设。然而，需要进一步的研究来确定这种校准过程如何影响时间感知的发展轨迹。
