Metric error monitoring for a cleaner record of timing

Abstract

A recent line of research has shown that humans can keep track of the direction and magnitude of their timing errors without relying on feedback. But these studies tested temporal error monitoring explicitly by interrogating participants regarding their errors, which might have inadvertently primed the prospective coupling between the first-order timing and second-order metacognitive judgments. The current study utilized an indirect way of testing temporal error awareness while providing a strong objective incentive for maximizing the accuracy of first-order timing performance. In two experiments, participants were asked to maximize the average proximity of their time reproduction to the target by accepting or rejecting their time reproduction depending on the subjective judgment of their proximity to the target time interval. We found that participants more frequently opted out of a trial with a larger distance between their reproductions and the target time interval in both directions, forming a positive quadratic relationship with reproduced time. Resultantly, timing precision was lower in trials that participants opted out of. Our results provide new evidence in support of the temporal error-monitoring performance of human participants.