Making Sense of Timing and Attention: Modality Effect in Timing with a Break

Tones are perceived longer than visual stimuli of same durations. One interpretation of this modality effect is that auditory stimuli capture attention more easily than visual stimuli, resulting in more efficient temporal processing. During a time interval production, expecting a break signal lengthens the produced interval, an effect explained by attention sharing between timing and monitoring for the signal occurrence. In the present study, participants produced a brief time interval defined by a visual or an auditory stimulus and in most trials, there was a break in stimulus presentation. The effect of break expectancy was significantly stronger when the timing stimulus was presented in the visual than in the auditory modality, an interaction supporting attentional interpretations of the modality and expectancy effects. We conclude that auditory stimuli orient attention to time more readily than visual stimuli in a context of attention sharing, which reduces the distracting effect of break expectancy.