2026/03/17 by Jordan J. Wehrman, John H. Wearden · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Action Observation and Synchronization #Motor Control and Adaptation #Neuroscience and Music Perception
paper · doi:10.1163/22134468-bja10133
openalex publication_date 2026/03/17 · openalex created_date 2026/03/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Abstract All human action is guided by when to act and is refined over time via feedback. However, in the real world, feedback is often ambiguous; how we learn to time in the face of imprecise feedback has been relatively underexplored. Here, participants were required to produce target durations with variable feedback limits; they were told their performance was ‘short’ or ‘long’ if differing by more than 5%, 10% or 20% of a target duration, and ‘good’ otherwise. This provided limits on the precision of feedback to the participants. We show that, despite differences in the feedback threshold, participants were able to accurately produce target durations on average. Furthermore, while participants were sensitive to feedback, even when given ambiguous feedback telling the participant they performed ‘good,’ they were still, in general, more accurate in their following production. This demonstrates a sensitivity to timing irrespective of feedback, important to understanding how people time intervals, and perform actions generally.