When do auditory/visual differences in duration judgements occur?

Abstract

Four experiments examined judgements of the duration of auditory and visual stimuli. Two used a bisection method, and two used verbal estimation. Auditory/visual differences were found when durations of auditory and visual stimuli were explicitly compared and when durations from both modalities were mixed in partition bisection. Differences in verbal estimation were also found both when people received a single modality and when they received both. In all cases, the auditory stimuli appeared longer than the visual stimuli, and the effect was greater at longer stimulus durations, consistent with a “pacemaker speed” interpretation of the effect. Results suggested that Penney, Gibbon, and Meck's (2000) “memory mixing” account of auditory/visual differences in duration judgements, while correct in some circumstances, was incomplete, and that in some cases people were basing their judgements on some preexisting temporal standard.