21. Auditory Time Perception

In this chapter, we propose to review studies on the capability of making explicit judgments about the duration of auditory time intervals. After a brief look at the main methods used to study time perception, we then focus on factors affecting sensitivity to time (e. g., discrimination levels) including repetition of intervals and the duration range under investigation, as well as whether the interval is embedded in a music or in a speech sequence. Factors affecting the perceived duration of sounds and time intervals are then described using for example markers' length, space, pitch, and intensity. The last section of this chapter reviews the main theoretical perspectives in the field of temporal information processing, with an emphasis on the distinction between the traditional beat-based versus interval-based mechanisms.