Cerebral asymmetry in the perception of overlapping brief time intervals?

The perception of duration, visually presented, has been studied depending on the visual half-field in which the light stimulations have been presented. The pair of intervals of equal duration, presented for comparison in the 200-1000 ms range, was studied in three different series, in each of which the beginning of the second interval followed accordingly: (a) 10 ms after the beginning of the first interval; (b) after 1/2 of the duration of the first interval; (c) the end of the first interval is at the same time the beginning of the second one. It has been established that two light stimuli of equal duration, presented consecutively in the left and right visual half-fields, are perceived as being different due to their temporal order, provided that the duration of the first interval has elapsed either prior to or at the moment of the onset of the second interval. The temporal order does not affect the subjective duration of overlapping light stimuli. It is possible to assume some kind of hemispheric asymmetry in the duration perception, provided some critical time has elapsed between the end of the first and the beginning of the second intervals. Such an asymmetry cannot be detected in the case of the overlapping intervals studied in the present work.