Mental representation of simple and complex temporal structures

拟议的项目调查的时间信息的表示。目前存在三个突出的假设，时间信息是如何编码（非模态，特定模态，和跨模态编码）。这些假设似乎相互矛盾。然而，假设每个假设都对某个领域有效。对文献的回顾表明，时间范围的维度（短持续时间与长持续时间）和时间结构的复杂性（简单与复杂）是区分这些领域的关键维度。拟议的实验测试这三个假设的有效性，并检查其边界。具体而言，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（短或长）？(b)时间信息的复杂性是否调节了这些信息的编码方式？(c)时间信息的编码是目标依赖的吗？

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?