A role for local mechanisms in perceived duration of brief visual events

Background: Spatially localized duration compression of a briefly presented moving stimulus following adaptation in the same location is taken as evidence for modality-specific neural timing mechanisms. <br/><br/>Aims: The present study used random dot motion stimuli to investigate where these mechanisms may be located. <br/><br/>Method: Experiment 1 measured duration compression of the test stimulus as a function of adaptor speed and revealed that duration compression is speed tuned. These data were then used to make predictions of duration compression responses for various models which were tested in experiment 2. Here a mixed-speed adaptor stimulus was used with duration compression being measured as a function of the adaptor’s ‘speed notch’ (the removal of a central band from the speed range). <br/><br/>Results: The results were consistent with a local-mean model. <br/><br/>Conclusions: Local-motion mechanisms are involved in duration perception of brief events.