The transition zone of some three seconds in temporal and spatial visual processing

How does temporal processing work in the visual field? In the current research, we utilized a temporal reproduction task, where subjects were instructed to reproduce the duration of a 2-second interval. We manipulated a pause duration (1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, or 32 seconds) between stimulus presentation and the reproduction and also the eccentricity of stimulus presentation in the visual field along the horizontal meridian left and right of the visual axis (-21°, -7°, 7°, 21°). Linear model analyses indicated that stimuli presented in the peripheral regions (21 degrees) resulted in longer reproductions compared to the perifoveal regions (7 degrees). This result contributes to the evidence of a functional inhomogeneity of the visual field. Furthermore, different pause durations indicated increasing reproduction durations for pauses up to 4 seconds followed by stable reproductions. Thus, we confirm a “transition zone” of temporal reproduction up to a few seconds observed already in the auditory modality suggesting modal independence of temporal processing. We propose that the transition zone reflects a mechanism of updating information that has to be integrated within this temporal interval before it is transferred to a memory system.