Static Internal Representation Of Dynamic Situations Reveals Time Compaction In Human Cognition

Abstract: The time-changing nature of our world demands processing of huge amounts of information in fast and reliable way to generate successful behaviors. Therefore, significant brain resources are devoted to process spatiotemporal information. Neural basis of spatial processing and their cognitive correlates are well established mostly for static environments. Nonetheless, in time-changing situations the brain exploits specific processing mechanisms for temporal information based on prediction and anticipation, as time compression during visual perception and mental navigation. Alternative hypothesis of time compaction integrates both views, postulating that dynamic situations are internally represented as static spatial maps where temporal information is extracted by predicting and structuring the relevant interactions. Nevertheless, empirical approaches tackling the biological soundness of time compaction are still lacking. Here we show that performance in a discrimination learning task involving dynamic situations can be either favored or hampered via previous exposition to interfering static scenes. In this sense, men were effectively conditioned in contrast to a control group, in coherence with the hypothesis. Meanwhile, women performed on par with control men, regardless of the previous conditioning. This suggests time compaction is a salient cognitive strategy in men when dealing with dynamic situations, while women seem to rely on a broader range of information processing strategies. Finally, we further corroborated the time compaction mechanism involved in these experimental findings through a mathematical model of the experimental process. Our results point to some form of static internal representation mechanism at cognitive level involved in decision-making and strategy planning in dynamic situations [...]