School-age children can form time-based event expectancy for context-atypical foreperiods

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using a binary choice response task, we compared the formation of time-based event expectancy and its underlying mechanisms between 30 children aged 8–12 and 39 young adults aged 18–35. During a learning phase, two different foreperiods (FPs) predicted the response target’s left or right location with a probability of .8, inducing time-based expectancy. We found that time-based expectancy was developed in school-aged children. However, children showed a significant expectancy effect, especially for context-atypical FPs. In a following test phase, the pairs of FPs changed from shorter to longer, or from longer to shorter, and the target’s location was no longer predictable on the basis of FP duration. Children did not transfer their expectancy from the learning phase to the test phase, suggesting that children, in contrast to adults, do not uniformly employ relative representations of time in time-based expectancy.