Temporal discrimination of one’s own reaction times in dual-task performance: Context effects and methodological constraints

Abstract

In this study we used the method of constant stimuli to investigate introspective reaction times in the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm under different temporal contexts. Previous introspective PRP studies have mostly used visual analogue scales to assess introspective reaction times and found that participants were largely unaware of the typical dual-task costs that arise in this paradigm (PRP effect). This apparent limitation of introspection has been taken as evidence for a serial processing bottleneck that encompasses response selection as well as conscious perception. In our study, in each trial participants first performed the PRP task and were then presented with a comparison interval that they had to compare with their reaction time to the second task (RT2). Across three experiments, we observed that the subjective estimates of RT2 (i.e., the points of subjective equality) did not reflect the objective pattern but were almost completely biased toward the center of the comparison intervals (asymmetry effect). In a control experiment in which participants discriminated RT2s of other participants without performing the PRP task, this bias was largely reduced. We interpret these results as indicating that in dual-task performance participants acquire only poor temporal representations of their own reaction times, and the apparent unawareness of the PRP effect may reflect disturbed timing abilities rather than a conscious perception bottleneck.