Mental representation of simple and complex temporal structures

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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?