How does exogenous alerting impact endogenous preparation on a temporal cueing task

Abstract

ABSTRACT Temporal attention is a cognitive mechanism that allows individuals to prepare to respond to an anticipated event. Lawrence, M. A., & Klein, R. M. (2013. Isolating exogenous and endogenous modes of temporal attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(2), 560–572. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029023) distinguished two forms of temporal attention: one elicited by purely endogenous alerting mechanisms and one elicited through exogenous alerting mechanisms. Recently, McCormick, C. R., Redden, R. S., Lawrence, M. A., & Klein, R. M. (2018. The independence of endogenous and exogenous temporal attention. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 80(8), 1885–1891. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-018-1575-y) found that these mechanisms generate additive effects on reaction time, however more informative speed and accuracy comparisons were not possible due to the effects being measured in a simple detection task. The current pair of experiments aims to compare two forms of temporal attention in a discrimination task while measuring both speed and accuracy by inducing methodological modifications that lower task demands. These manipulations were successful, as temporal cueing effects were observed for both the combined form and the less-studied purely endogenous form. However, speed-accuracy performance for these two forms of temporal attention did not align with our predictions based on prior work.