Peter Killeen works full time to answer those and other behavioral questions. An ASU professor of experimental psychology, Killeen uses various mathematical models to understand behaviors such as perception, learning, and motivation.
Timing is important in everything from jokes to conversation to lovemaking.
Killeen studies why people time things the way they do and how their internal timing systems operate. In a representative experiment, Killeen turns on the lights in pigeons' cages for four seconds and eight seconds. The pigeons have learned how to respond differentially to the time increments by tapping certain buttons. Tapping the correct button provides a food reward. Reinforcement is a second portion of Killeen's work.