title: Perceived empty duration between sounds of different lengths: Possible relation with repetition and rhythmic grouping.
abstract: We investigated how perceived duration of empty time intervals would be modulated by the length of sounds marking those intervals. Three sounds were successively presented in Experiment 1. Each sound was short (S) or long (L), and the temporal position of the middle sound's onset was varied. The lengthening of each sound resulted in delayed perception of the onset; thus, the middle sound's onset had to be presented earlier in the SLS than in the LSL sequence so that participants perceived the three sounds as presented at equal interonset intervals. In Experiment 2, a short sound and a long sound were alternated repeatedly, and the relative duration of the SL interval to the LS interval was varied. This repeated sequence was perceived as consisting of equal interonset intervals when the onsets of all sounds were aligned at physically equal intervals. If the same onset delay as in the preceding experiment had occurred, participants should have perceived equality between the interonset intervals in the repeated sequence when the SL interval was physically shortened relative to the LS interval. The effects of sound length seemed to be canceled out when the presentation of intervals was repeated. Finally, the perceived duration of the interonset intervals in the repeated sequence was not influenced by whether the participant's native language was French or Japanese, or by how the repeated sequence was perceptually segmented into rhythmic groups.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Informatics, Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 432-8011, Japan. tkuroda@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Tsuyoshi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kuroda
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Science, Kyushu University, 4-9-1 Shiobaru, Minami-ku, Fukuoka, 815-8540, Japan.
authors.forename: Erika
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tomimatsu
authors.affiliation: École de psychologie, Université Laval, 2325 rue des Bibliothèques, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada.
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Grondin
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Informatics, Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Naka-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, 432-8011, Japan.
authors.forename: Makoto
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miyazaki
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D010898:Pitch Perception / Q000502:physiology; D013016:Sound; D013017:Sound Localization; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Empty duration; Marker length; Repetition; Rhythmic grouping; Time perception