Temporal Decision Making in Simultaneous Timing

With two experiments it was examined whether one or two clocks operate the timing of two intervals presented simultaneously. The target interval always preceded the distracter interval, and was longer than it. Thus, the distracter was completely embedded within the target interval. The participants used the method of temporal production. The stimuli to be judged differed in modality which allowed for testing the hypothesis of modality-specific internal clocks that operate in parallel and independent from one another when two stimuli were presented at the same time. The main results of this study were as follows. First, production times of the target interval increased proportionally with production times of the distracter interval. Second, the auditory distracter interval was on average produced in less time than the visual distracter interval. Third, a target interval that was accompanied by an auditory distracter interval was on average produced in less time than a target interval that was accompanied by a visual distracter interval. The results obtained support the hypothesis of multiple clocks being involved in the timing of different intervals presented simultaneously.