Time Delay Affects Thermal Discrimination

Time order errors have been investigated in several fields, and the time delay between subsequent stimuli in discrimination tasks is one example of such errors. However, the effect of these types of errors in thermal discrimination tasks is understudied. To evaluate the effect of inter-stimulus interval (ISI) on thermal perception, we used a discrimination task with a staircase method between two non-zero thermal stimuli. We found that JND
$_\mathrm{ISI=0s}$
was 3.10 and increased by 11.9% and 21.2% at JND
$_\mathrm{ISI=3s}$
and JND
$_\mathrm{ISI=9s}$
, respectively. Statistical analysis revealed that ISI was a statistically significant effect (
$p< 0.05$
) on thermal perception in our task. Future studies on thermal perception should keep the ISI consistent and report the time.