Temporal Perception
Synchrony, duration, recalibration, and timing in interactive systems
Temporal perception asks how time is perceived when there is no dedicated sensory organ for time. The work studies synchrony, temporal order, duration, rhythm, reaction time, recalibration, and the way perceived timing changes with context, expectation, attention, and action.
Time is also a critical feature of multisensory integration. Signals that arrive together are more likely to be interpreted as belonging to the same event, while artificially introduced asynchronies can prevent integration or change the perceived event itself. Short exposure to an asynchrony can recalibrate simultaneity, making later discrepancies appear less pronounced, and these aftereffects can transfer across sensory pairings depending on how signals are presented.
The same questions matter for technology. Computers, cameras, displays, audio devices, trackers, and VR systems introduce delays, and those delays affect both experiments and user experience. This topic therefore includes methods for measuring stimulus timing, psychophysical procedures for estimating temporal sensitivity, and applied work on timing in XR, haptics, and musical ensemble performance.
Key Questions
How do people judge synchrony, temporal order, rhythm, and duration without a dedicated sense of time?
When do delays prevent multisensory integration, and when does perception recalibrate to them?
How do attention, expectation, movement, and context distort perceived timing?
How should timing be measured and controlled in XR, haptics, music, and psychophysical experiments?
Related Keywords
Portfolio and Resources
TIMELY tutorial and psychometric fitting scripts
Methods and tutorial material for comparing psychometric fitting procedures and temporal sensitivity measures.
Spearman-Karber and WAVE method scripts
Reproducible scripts for psychophysical threshold estimation and timing analysis.
VR delay measurement code
Software supporting reproducible measurement of end-to-end latency in virtual reality systems, linked to work on timing accuracy in psychophysical and XR experiments.
Augmented Reality Music Ensemble
Research platform and public resources for augmented and virtual music ensemble rehearsal, connected to MyJAMS and spin-out activity.
Virtuoso Strings dataset
Open string ensemble recordings, scores, and onset annotations for timing analysis, automatic music transcription, and ARME research.
AMUSER
Augmented MUSic Ensemble Rehearsal translation work, developing app and impact pathways from ARME research.
MUSEX
MUSic Ensemble eXhibition, translating ARME research into exhibition, impact, and public engagement outputs.Featured Publications
(2020).
Causality shifts the perceived temporal order of audiovisual events..
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
(2019).
Exogenous cueing of visual attention using small, directional, tactile cues applied to the fingertip.
2019 IEEE World Haptics Conference, WHC 2019.
Articles in temporal perception 27
(2020).
Causality shifts the perceived temporal order of audiovisual events..
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
(2019).
Exogenous cueing of visual attention using small, directional, tactile cues applied to the fingertip.
2019 IEEE World Haptics Conference, WHC 2019.
(2019).
Perceptual Limits of Visual-Haptic Simultaneity in Virtual Reality Interactions.
2019 IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC).
(2018).
Modality-specific temporal constraints for state-dependent interval timing.
Scientific Reports.
(2018).
An Experimental Setup to Test Dual-Joystick Directional Responses to Vibrotactile Stimuli.
IEEE Transactions on Haptics.
(2018).
Timing and Time Perception: Procedures, Measures, & Applications.
BRILL.
(2018).
Assessing Duration Discrimination: Psychophysical Methods and Psychometric Function Analysis.
Timing and Time Perception: Procedures, Measures, & Applications.
(2018).
Musical Scales in Tone Sequences Improve Temporal Accuracy.
Frontiers in Psychology.
(2018).
Experimental Evaluation of Vibrotactile Training Mappings for Dual-Joystick Directional Guidance.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics).
(2017).
An experimental setup to test dual-joystick directional responses to vibrotactile stimuli.
2017 IEEE World Haptics Conference (WHC).
(2016).
Optimal Perceived Timing: Integrating Sensory Information with Dynamically Updated Expectations.
Scientific Reports.
(2016).
Temporal Regularity of the Environment Drives Time Perception.
PLOS ONE.
(2016).
The Consistency of Crossmodal Synchrony Perception Across the Visual, Auditory, and Tactile Senses.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
(2016).
Perceived time and temporal structure: Neural entrainment to isochronous stimulation increases duration estimates.
NeuroImage.
(2016).
For the Last Time: Temporal Sensitivity and Perceived Timing of the Final Stimulus in an Isochronous Sequence.
Timing and Time Perception.
(2015).
Filling the blanks in temporal intervals: The type of filling influences perceived duration and discrimination performance.
Frontiers in Psychology.
(2015).
Speed/accuracy tradeoff in force perception.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.
(2015).
Taking a long look at isochrony: Perceived duration increases with temporal, but not stimulus regularity.
Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics.
(2015).
Timing Rhythms: Perceived Duration Increases with a Predictable Temporal Structure of Short Interval Fillers.
Plos One.
(2014).
Duration perception in crossmodally-defined intervals.
Acta Psychologica.
(2014).
Response time-dependent force perception during hand movement.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics).
(2014).
The duration of uncertain times: Audiovisual information about intervals is integrated in a statistically optimal fashion.
PLoS ONE.
(2012).
Multisensory simultaneity recalibration: storage of the aftereffect in the absence of counterevidence.
Experimental Brain Research.
(2011).
Audiovisual asynchrony detection in human speech..
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.
(2009).
Recalibration of multisensory simultaneity: Cross-modal transfer coincides with a change in perceptual latency.
Journal of Vision.
(2008).
Motion primitives of dancing.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics).
(2007).
Temporal calibration between the visual, auditory, and tactile senses: A psychophysical approach.
Peach Summer School 2007.
Related Research Areas
Multisensory Perception
How the brain combines uncertain signals during perception and action
Extended Reality
Immersive systems grounded in perceptual science
Psychophysics
Measuring perception, action, and user experience
Computational Modelling
Formal models of perception, timing, movement, and interaction
Massimiliano Di Luca
Associate Professor in Psychology and Computer Science
Associate Professor in Psychology and Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, leading interdisciplinary research in multisensory perception, extended reality, haptics, and computational cognitive science.