Temporal information affects the performance of numerosity discrimination: Behavioral evidence for a shared system for numerosity and temporal processing

In this study, we tested whether and how temporal information would affect the performance of numerosity discrimination in sequential events, in an attempt to make the relationship clear between temporal and numerosity processing. We manipulated the duration of event presentation (i.e., the stimulus duration) and the duration of the sequence (i.e., the total interval). We also employed three levels of standard event numbers (i.e., 5, 10, and 20) to test whether and how the effect would differ among event numbers. The results showed that temporal information affected the performance of numerosity discrimination; precision deteriorated when stimulus duration and the total interval were manipulated, and the number of events in the longer total interval were judged as less numerous than those in the shorter total interval across standard numbers. Accordingly, our results suggested the existence of a shared system between time and numerosity processing.