When specific action biases meet nonspecific preparation: Event repetition modulates the variable-foreperiod effect.

Abstract

Preparing for the moment of action speeds up reaction time (RT) performance even if the particular response is unknown beforehand. When the preparatory interval, or foreperiod (FP), varies unpredictably between trials, responses usually become faster with increasing FP length. This variable-FP effect has been demonstrated to partly originate from trial-to-trial sequential effects of FP length, which are asymmetric as they occur mainly in short-FP but not in long-FP trials. In two experiments, we examined whether and how event-specific biases arising from previous target processing and responding affect both variable-FP and sequential FP effects. We found that trial-to-trial repetitions (vs. alternations) of imperative events produced response time benefits in short-FP but not in long-FP trials, almost eliminating the variable-FP effect, while the sequential FP effect remained intact. This asymmetric contribution to speeded performance in variable-FP settings suggests that sequential event-specific biases may be highly transient and not necessarily an integral part of the mental representations that guide time-based expectancy, or may be overridden by high levels of nonspecific preparation in long-FP trials. In conclusion, temporal preparation appears to be a nonspecific mechanism (i.e., generally not bound to particular event features) for prioritizing certain positions on the mental time line, on which event-specific short-term biases are superimposed if time-based preparation is weak. (PsycINFO Database Record

Different effects of spatial and temporal attention on the integration and segregation of stimuli in time

“…One interpretation is that this apparent disparity arises due to task differences: Making a judgment about the temporal order of stimuli arguably relies more heavily on higher-level decision processes than did the target-search task employed here. Since temporal-orienting effects usually emerge when the primary measure is a metric, like reaction times, that reflects differences in processing stages further up the hierarchy, such as decision or motor processing (Langner et al, 2018;Thomaschke & Dreisbach, 2015;Vangkilde et al, 2012;Volberg & Thomaschke, 2017), this is a pertinent difference between the present study and previous work. Reaction time data were unsuitable for the analysis in the present study, due to the response collection method: unspeeded mouse clicks on a probe grid of 16 locations after a fixed delay from stimulus offset.…”

“…Whereas spatial orienting benefits were boosted further by valid temporal expectations, in the case of temporal orienting, performance benefits were extinguished if spatial expectations were misleading. There is also evidence that temporal expectations can combine synergistically with other forms of expectations-for example, with event-specific information about stimulus identity (Langner, Steinborn, Eickhoff, & Huestegge, 2018).…”

Does temporal predictability of tasks influence task choice?

“…It remains unchanged whenever the foreperiod ends before passing that time point and is weakened when that time point passes without an imperative stimulus appearing. Other accounts favor a more strategic point of view (Niemi & Näätänen, 1981), assuming that participants actively prepare according to the estimated probability of stimulus occurrence, or a mixture of both intentional preparation as well as unintentional conditioning (Langner, Steinborn, Eickhoff, & Huestegge, 2018;Vallesi & Shallice, 2007).…”

“…Steinborn et al, (2009Steinborn et al, ( , 2010 used varying warning stimulus modalities (or features, Steinborn et al, 2010) to show that this sequential modulation was largely reduced when modality (or sufficiently distinct features within one modality) shifted, further providing evidence that short-foreperiod trials are influenced by preceding trials in a way that longforeperiod trials are not: after-effects of the previous trial, e.g., its reinforced time point of peak readiness, thus seem to be limited to comparably short foreperiods. Other processes, such as conceptually driven, more intentional preparation processes, may prevail for longer foreperiods (Langner et al, 2018).…”

“…Meiran, 1996) or may sometimes be overruled by other factors impacting task choice (cf. Arrington & Logan, 2005;Langner et al, 2018).…”