The relation between onset, offset, and duration perception as examined by psychophysical data and event-related brain potentials

By means of behavioral data and electrophysiological recordings, we investigated the relation between the subjective duration of stimuli in the millisecond range and the moments of their perceived onset and offset. In three consecutive tasks, subjects (1) judged the duration of auditory stimuli and performed simple reaction time tasks to (2) onset and (3) offset of the same tones. All stimuli were presented with variable response-stimulus-intervals (RSI). To a certain extent, this manipulation was shown to affect onset, offset, and duration perception in a similar way. However, more profound analyses revealed dissociations between the tasks. Consequently, there seems to be no simple relation between perceived duration and the moments of onset and offset perception, but duration judgments seem to be based on more complex processes.