Attention Gates the Selective Encoding of Duration

Abstract

The abundance of temporal information in our environment calls for the e ective selection and utilization of temporal information that is relevant for our behavior. Here we investigated whether visual attention gates the selective encoding of relevant duration information when multiple sources of duration information are present. We probed the encoding of duration by using a duration-adaptation paradigm. Participants adapted to two concurrently presented streams of stimuli with di erent durations, while detecting oddballs in one of the streams. We measured the resulting duration after- e ect (DAE) and found that the DAE re ects stronger relative adaptation to attended durations, compared to unattended durations. Additionally, we demonstrate that unattended durations do not contribute to the measured DAE. These results suggest that attention plays a crucial role in the selective encoding of duration: attended durations are encoded, while encoding of unattended durations is either weak or absent.