Duration Perception Versus Perception Duration: A Proposed Model for the Consciously Experienced Moment

Abstract

Duration perception is not the same as perception duration. Time is an object of perception in its own right and is qualitatively different to exteroceptive or interoceptive perception of concrete objects or sensations originating within the self. In reviewing evidence for and against the experienced moment, White (2017, Psychol. Bull., 143, 735–756) proposed a model of global integration of information dense envelopes of integration. This is a valuable addition to the literature because it supposes that, like Tononi’s (2004, BMC Neurosci., 5, 42) Integrated Information Theory, consciousness is an integral step above perception of objects or the self. Consciousness includes the perception of abstract contents such as time, space, and magnitude, as well as post-perceptual contents drawn from memory. The present review takes this logic a step further and sketches a potential neurobiological pathway through the salience, default mode, and central executive networks that culminates in a candidate model of how duration perception and consciousness arises. Global integration is viewed as a process of Bayesian Prediction Error Minimisation according to a model put forward by Hohwy, Paton and Palmer (2016, Phenomenol. Cogn. Sci., 15, 315–335) called ‘distrusting the present’. The proposed model also expresses global integration as an intermediate stage between perception and memory that spans an approximate one second duration, an analogue of Wittmann’s (2011, Front. Integr. Neurosci., 5, 66) experienced moment.