When participants can temporally prepare for a visual target stimulus, responses to this stimulus are faster and more accurate. Recent accounts attribute these effects either to an earlier accumulation of stimulus information or to an increased rate of information sampling. The present study examines whether temporal preparation induces such changes in the dynamics of information processing by investigating speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) functions. Shorter onsets and higher asymptotes of the estimated SAT functions were found for high temporal preparation conditions. These results provide evidence for an earlier onset of information accumulation in the visual system when temporal preparation is high.

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A growing number of studies show that temporal preparation, which denotes processes of anticipation and preparation for an upcoming stimulus, facilitates perceptual processing. Recently, it has been hypothesized that this perceptual benefit arises due to an acceleration of early perceptual processing. Whereas this idea receives some direct support from a recent study showing that temporal preparation reduces the latency of early auditory ERPs, supportive evidence regarding the visual modality lacks so far. To further investigate this acceleration account, we measured the latency of early visual ERPs in a visual search task. We observed that temporal preparation, manipulated via constant foreperiods, reduced the latency of early visual ERPs, specifically the N2pc as an index of attentional target processing. This finding supports a modality-independent acceleration of perceptual processing by temporal preparation.