Determining the potential benefits of error feedback and metacognition on perceptual learning in the temporal and spatial domain

Understanding time is crucial for our survival, influencing tasks that require coordination, alignment, and cognitive assessments. However, the process of learning and monitoring of temporal errors remains unclear. A subset of studies has shown that, unlike other modalities of magnitudes, perceptual learning in the temporal domain may not benefit from error feedback, suggesting that temporal perceptual learning may involve a distinct process that differs from other non-temporal information. We hypothesize this may be attributed to the concept of time being deeply and internally rooted within each organism and therefore may better benefit from an evaluation process that is done internally rather than from external feedback. To further investigate how we learn to time, the current study examines the learning rate, specificity, and transferability as a function of feedback method (explicit feedback and self-reflected metacognitive evaluation) during a temporal production task. The examination is also conducted in conjunction with a line production task to determine if the results diverge for temporal and spatial domains. Our results showed that spatial performance improved across all feedback conditions. However, improvements in temporal accuracy were slower and less pronounced regardless of feedback type. Further analysis revealed that participants were aware of the direction and magnitude of their errors, even when accuracy did not improve, highlighting a potential role for metacognitive insight that supports error monitoring and may aid learning transfer. These findings are discussed with respect to the cognitive mechanisms underlying temporal learning.