No aftereffect of motor duration production on auditory duration perception

Abstract

Abstract Adaptation to stimulus duration causes a repulsive aftereffect on the perceived duration of subsequent stimuli. Most studies investigating duration adaptation have found that the effect is confined to the adapted modality, highlighting unimodal components of duration processing. Here, we use adaptation to test whether motor and auditory duration processing rely on partially shared neural mechanisms by looking for a transfer of the duration aftereffect between these modalities. We asked participants to estimate the perceived duration of auditory stimuli following auditory or motor adaptation. While we replicated the unimodal effects of auditory adaptation, we report that motor adaptation did not produce the typical repulsive aftereffect. We interpret this result as evidence that duration processing by the motor and auditory systems is based on independent mechanisms.