Time marking in perception

Abstract

Several authors have proposed that perceptual information carries labels that identify temporal features, including time of occurrence, ordinal temporal relations, and brief durations. These labels serve to locate and organise perceptual objects, features, and events in time. In some proposals time marking has local, specific functions such as synchronisation of different features in perceptual processing. In other proposals time marking has general significance and is responsible for rendering perceptual experience temporally coherent, just as various forms of spatial information render the visual environment spatially coherent. These proposals, which all concern time marking on the millisecond time scale, are reviewed. It is concluded that time marking is vital to the construction of a multisensory perceptual world in which things are orderly with respect to both space and time, but that much more research is needed to ascertain its functions in perception and its neurophysiological foundations.

Keywords: Perceived happening; Perceptual asynchrony; Temporal integration; Time marking, time perception, duration perception, backward referral, frames of conscious perception.