Mental representation of simple and complex temporal structures

提议的项目研究时间信息的表示。目前，关于时间信息如何编码存在三种主要假设（模态编码、模态特定编码和跨模态编码）。这些假设似乎相互矛盾。然而，假设每个假设在特定领域是有效的。文献综述表明，时间范围维度（短时间与长时间）和时间结构复杂性维度（简单与复杂）是区分这些领域的关键维度。提出的实验测试了这三个假设的有效性，并检查了它们的边界。具体来说，解决了以下关键问题：(a)时间信息的编码是否取决于时间范围（短与长）？(b)时间信息的复杂性是否调节了这些信息的编码方式？(c)时间信息的编码是否与目标有关？

The proposed project investigates the representation of temporal information. Presently there exist three prominent hypotheses as to how temporal information is coded (amodal, modality-specific, and crossmodal encoding). These hypotheses seemingly contradict each other. However, presumably each hypothesis is valid for a certain domain. A review of the literature suggests that the dimensions of time range (short vs. long durations) and complexity of the temporal structure (simple vs. complex) are key dimensions for distinguishing these domains. The proposed experiments test the validity of these three hypotheses and examine their boundaries. Specifically, the following key questions are addressed: (a) Does the coding of temporal information depend on the time range (short vs. long)? (b) Does the complexity of temporal information modulate how this information is coded? (c) Is the coding of temporal information goal-dependent?