scholarly journals Weber’s Law and the Scalar Property of Timing: A Test of Canine Timing

Animals ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 801
Author(s):  
Jessica Cliff ◽  
Surrey Jackson ◽  
James McEwan ◽  
Lewis Bizo
Keyword(s):  
Stimulus Pair ◽  
Light Stimulus ◽  
Geometric Mean ◽  
Domestic Dogs ◽  
Weber’S Law ◽  
Scalar Property ◽  
Weber's Law ◽  
Research Reporting ◽  
Temporal Bisection ◽  
Bisection Procedure

Domestic dogs completed a temporal bisection procedure that required a response to one lever following a light stimulus of short duration and to another lever following a light stimulus of a longer duration. The short and long durations across the four conditions were (0.5–2.0 s, 1.0–4.0 s, 2.0–8.0 s, and 4.0–16.0 s). Durations that were intermediate, the training durations, and the training durations, were presented during generalization tests. The dogs bisected the intervals near the geometric mean of the short and long-stimulus pair. Weber fractions were not constant when plotted as a function of time: A U-shaped function described them. These results replicate the findings of previous research reporting points of subjective equality falling close to the geometric mean and also confirm recent reports of systematic departures from Weber’s law.

scholarly journals Electrophysiological Measures of Time Processing in Infant and Adult Brains: Weber's Law Holds

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Brannon ◽  
Melissa E. Libertus ◽  
Warren H. Meck ◽  
Marty G. Woldorff
Keyword(s):  
Time Perception ◽  
Mismatch Negativity ◽  
Absolute Difference ◽  
Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Weber’S Law ◽  
Scalar Property ◽  
Human Infants ◽  
Weber's Law ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

Behavioral studies have demonstrated that time perception in adults, children, and nonhuman animals is subject to Weber's Law. More specifically, as with discriminations of other features, it has been found that it is the ratio between two durations rather than their absolute difference that controls the ability of an animal to discriminate them. Here, we show that scalp-recorded event-related electrical brain potentials (ERPs) in both adults and 10-month-old human infants, in response to changes in interstimulus interval (ISI), appear to obey the scalar property found in time perception in adults, children, and nonhuman animals. Using a timing-interval oddball paradigm, we tested adults and infants in conditions where the ratio between the standard and deviant interval in a train of homogeneous auditory stimuli varied such that there was a 1:4 (only for the infants), 1:3, 1:2, and 2:3 ratio between the standard and deviant intervals. We found that the amplitude of the deviant-triggered mismatch negativity ERP component (deviant-ISI ERP minus standard-ISI ERP) varied as a function of the ratio of the standard to deviant interval. Moreover, when absolute values were varied and ratio was held constant, the mismatch negativity did not vary.

Does Motion Perception Follow Weber's Law?

Perception ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes M Zanker
Keyword(s):  
Motion Perception ◽  
Stimulus Intensity ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Weber’S Law ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Weber's Law ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Noise Ratio ◽  
Random Dot Patterns

The subjective strength of a percept often depends on the stimulus intensity in a nonlinear way. Such coding is often reflected by the observation that the just-noticeable difference between two stimulus intensities (JND) is proportional to the absolute stimulus intensity. This behaviour, which is usually referred to as Weber's Law, can be interpreted as a compressive nonlinearity extending the operating range of a sensory system. When the noise superimposed on a motion stimulus is increased along a logarithmic scale (in order to provide linear steps in subjective difference) in motion-coherency measurements, observers often report that the subjective differences between the various noise levels increase together with the absolute level. This observation could indicate a deviation from Weber's Law for variation of motion strength as obtained by changing the signal-to-noise ratio in random-dot kinematograms. Thus JNDs were measured for the superposition of uncorrelated random-dot patterns on static random-dot patterns and three types of motion stimuli realised as random-dot kinematograms, namely large-field and object ‘Fourier’ motion (all or a group of dots move coherently), ‘drift-balanced’ motion (a travelling region of static dots), and paradoxical ‘theta’ motion (the dots on the surface of an object move in opposite direction to the object itself). For all classes of stimuli, the JNDs when expressed as differences in signal-to-noise ratio turned out to increase with the signal-to-noise ratio, whereas the JNDs given as percentage of superimposed noise appear to be similar for all tested noise levels. Thus motion perception is in accordance with Weber's Law when the signal-to-noise ratio is regarded as stimulus intensity, which in turn appears to be coded in a nonlinear fashion. In general the Weber fractions are very large, indicating a poor differential sensitivity in signal-to-noise measurements.

scholarly journals Weber’s law, the “near miss,” and binaural detection

1980 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Osman ◽  
H. Tzuo ◽  
P. L. Tzuo
Keyword(s):  
Near Miss ◽  
Weber’S Law ◽  
Weber's Law ◽  
Binaural Detection

scholarly journals An Inverse Grip Starting Posture Gives Rise to Time-Dependent Adherence to Weber's Law: A Reply to Ganel et al. ( 2014 )

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Heath ◽  
Shirin Davarpanah Jazi ◽  
Scott A. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Time Dependent ◽  
Weber’S Law ◽  
Weber's Law
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