Perceptual versus motor spatiotemporal interactions in duration reproduction across two hands

The possibility of spatiotemporal interactions in motor action that are comparable with the perceptual kappa effect was tested in the present study. In the kappa effect, the empty duration between two successive stimuli is overestimated when the spatial distance between these stimuli is increased. Indeed, when participants reproduced the standard (empty) duration, delivering two tactile stimuli to different hands resulted in a longer reproduced duration than delivering both stimuli to the same hand, regardless of how long the standard was. However, when a spatial factor during motor action (reproduction) was manipulated by letting participants use an identical hand or different hands for two button pushes reproducing the standard, the different-hand condition yielded a shorter reproduced duration than the identical-hand condition when the standard was 1000 ms or more. More specifically, this decrement in the reproduced duration grew linearly with the standard, suggesting that a given space increases the “rate” of an internal timer during motor action. Because each tick of the timer was accelerated, the total error causing an earlier push of the second button was increased with the standard. A pacemaker-counter model was adopted to explain the differences between the perceptual and the motor spatiotemporal interactions.