“…The preparatory state triggered by the symbolic cue can be referred to various dimensions of the upcoming stimulus, such as its spatial location, temporal occurrence, color, direction of motion, or even the semantic meaning of linguistic stimuli. This preparatory state or expectation is known to optimize the subsequent processing of the target (e.g., Correa, Lupiáñez, Madrid, & Tudela, 2006;Griffin, Miniussi, & Nobre, 2001;Krauzlis & Adler, 2001;Ruz & Nobre, 2008;Vierck & Miller, 2008;Vossel, Weidner, Thiel, & Fink, 2009), probably by providing a competitive bias that favors task-relevant representations over competing representations (Bar, 2003;Stokes, Thompson, Nobre, & Duncan, 2009). …”