Abstract
We outline a new multiple trace theory of temporal preparation (MTP), which accounts for behavior in reaction time (RT) tasks in which the participant is presented with a warning stimulus (S1) followed by a target stimulus (S2) that requires a speeded response. The theory assumes that during the foreperiod (FP; the S1–S2 interval) inhibition is applied to prevent premature response, while a wave of activation occurs upon the presentation of S2. On each trial, these actions are stored in a separate memory trace, which, jointly with earlier formed memory traces, starts contributing to preparation on subsequent trials. We show that MTP accounts for classic effects in temporal preparation, including mean RT–FP functions observed under a variety of FP distributions and asymmetric sequential effects. We discuss the advantages of MTP over other accounts of these effects (trace-conditioning and hazard-based explanations) and suggest a critical experiment to empirically distinguish among them.
Highlights
Timing the occurrence of future events is a fundamental ability that we routinely apply in a wide variety of activities, such as driving a car, cooking a meal, jumping up to catch a ball, or drawing up our daily agenda
We focus on timing processes in the reaction time (RT) task, but our theoretical analysis may be revealing about the nature of timing processes in other task domains as well, since it ranges over general cognitive principles of learning and memory
A FAMILY OF PHENOMENA IN TEMPORAL PREPARATION The phenomena of temporal preparation that we describe are all taken from RT tasks, in which participants are instructed to prepare on the basis of S1 and to respond as quickly as possible to S2
Summary
We outline a new multiple trace theory of temporal preparation (MTP), which accounts for behavior in reaction time (RT) tasks in which the participant is presented with a warning stimulus (S1) followed by a target stimulus (S2) that requires a speeded response. The theory assumes that during the foreperiod (FP; the S1–S2 interval) inhibition is applied to prevent premature response, while a wave of activation occurs upon the presentation of S2. On each trial, these actions are stored in a separate memory trace, which, jointly with earlier formed memory traces, starts contributing to preparation on subsequent trials.
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