Humans Perceive Time Somewhere in Between Reality and Our Expectations

Summary: Researchers report people anticipate future occurrences of stimuli in line with expected patterns, but the perceived accuracy of the response differs from reality when the stimuli is either accelerated or delayed.

Source: University of Birmingham.

New research, using a Bayesian inference model of audio and visual stimuli, has shown how our perception of time lies mid-way between reality and our expectations.

90 participants were tested across four experiments, and asked to report on the timing of the last event in a regular sequence of beeps or flashes.

The findings, published in Scientific Reports, displayed that participants anticipated future occurrences of the stimuli in line with the regular pattern, but the perceived accuracy of their response differed from reality when the stimuli was either accelerated or delayed.

If the timing was regular, participants were able to anticipate the stimulus. However, when the final stimulus was delivered early, the participants perceived that it had occurred ‘only slightly earlier’ than expected, around halfway between their predicted response and the reality.

Similarly, when the final stimulus was delivered late, the participants had a similar perception of halfway between their prediction and the reality.

The researchers, from the universities of Birmingham and Sussex, believe their findings suggest that humans do not perceive time as it really is – rather as a mid-way between reality and their expectations. These findings suggest that the brain continuously updates the probability of encountering future stimuli based on prior experiences.

Dr Max Di Luca, from the University of Birmingham, explained, “Our brain relies on past events to predict what will happen next. These predictions are essential to survival because they allow us to react faster to the environment around us and plan what actions to perform.”

“Our perceptions are also affected by these predictions; they are the result of the combination of our expectations and actual sensory information. We don’t perceive the world as it really is, or as we expect it to be, but somewhere in between.”

Image shows a red dots appearing.
If the timing was regular, participants were able to anticipate the stimulus. However, when the final stimulus was delivered early, the participants perceived that it had occurred ‘only slightly earlier’ than expected, around halfway between their predicted response and the reality. NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to University of Birmingham.

“Imaging a bad musician playing a cover version of one of your favourite songs. You have an expectation of which notes to expect and when to expect them. Even when poorly performed, your expectations will help ‘soften the blow’ and make it sound relatively better. However, if you were listening to them play a song you had never heard before, you would have no real expectations and so every mistimed note would be evident.”

Dr Darren Rhodes, now at the University of Sussex, added, “We are not passive watchers. We use what we know about the world to inform us about when something is likely to happen. If our predictions are slightly wrong, we perceive the world somewhere in between expectation and reality. We hear, see and feel what we think we should be experiencing, not what is really happening out there.”

“The conclusions that that can be drawn from this research can be applied to several technological domains” says Dr Di Luca.

“Knowing how the brain predicts the world can be used to teach robots how to behave and think in a way similar to humans, for example,” says Dr Rhodes, who is working at a European-funded project on the interaction between neuroscience and robotics.

About this neuroscience research article

Dr Di Luca is currently spending his sabbatical at Oculus.

Source: Luke Harrison – University of Birmingham
Image Source: This NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to University of Birmingham.
Original Research: Full open access research for “Optimal Perceived Timing: Integrating Sensory Information with Dynamically Updated Expectations” by Massimiliano Di Luca and Darren Rhodes in Scientific Reports. Published online July 7 2016 doi:10.1038/srep28563

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]University of Birmingham. “Humans Perceive Time Somewhere in Between Reality and Our Expectations.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 13 July 2016.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/time-perception-neuroscience-4675/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]University of Birmingham. (2016, July 13). Humans Perceive Time Somewhere in Between Reality and Our Expectations. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved July 13, 2016 from https://neurosciencenews.com/time-perception-neuroscience-4675/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]University of Birmingham. “Humans Perceive Time Somewhere in Between Reality and Our Expectations.” https://neurosciencenews.com/time-perception-neuroscience-4675/ (accessed July 13, 2016).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Optimal Perceived Timing: Integrating Sensory Information with Dynamically Updated Expectations

The environment has a temporal structure, and knowing when a stimulus will appear translates into increased perceptual performance. Here we investigated how the human brain exploits temporal regularity in stimulus sequences for perception. We find that the timing of stimuli that occasionally deviate from a regularly paced sequence is perceptually distorted. Stimuli presented earlier than expected are perceptually delayed, whereas stimuli presented on time and later than expected are perceptually accelerated. This result suggests that the brain regularizes slightly deviant stimuli with an asymmetry that leads to the perceptual acceleration of expected stimuli. We present a Bayesian model for the combination of dynamically-updated expectations, in the form of a priori probability of encountering future stimuli, with incoming sensory information. The asymmetries in the results are accounted for by the asymmetries in the distributions involved in the computational process.

“Optimal Perceived Timing: Integrating Sensory Information with Dynamically Updated Expectations” by Massimiliano Di Luca and Darren Rhodes in Scientific Reports. Published online July 7 2016 doi:10.1038/srep28563

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