Avaliação de Efeitos Contextuais na Percepção Temporal em uma Tarefa de Mapeamento Espacial

Abstract

Time perception can vary depending on the temporal context in which the perceived durations occur. At least two types of contextual effects have been documented in literature: Ab assimilation effect in a temporal reproduction task with humans and contrast effect in a temporal production tasks with pigeons. The aim of the present study is to contribute to this experimental program by evaluating the occurrence of contextual effects on a spatial mapping task with humans. Participants were presented to tones that varied in duration and had to locate each duration along a spatial continuum. The tones were presented under three different temporal contexts - short, intermediate and long –, with three of the tones, 400-ms, 500-ms and 600-ms long, common to all the contexts. If contextual effects do occur in this task, time estimates for the duration of these common tones should vary with the contexts. The results revealed that the spatial mapping task was, in general, effective at evaluating time perception in human adults, albeit there was no significant evidence of contextual effects. It seems though that temporal contexts might affect the discriminability of the durations.