Temporal preparation accelerates spatial selection by facilitating bottom-up processing

Abstract

Temporal preparation facilitates spatial selection in visual search. This selection benefit has not only been observed for targets, but also for task-irrelevant, salient distractors. This result suggests that temporal preparation influences bottom-up salience in spatial selection. To test this assumption, we conducted an event-related-potential (ERP) study in which we measured the joint effect of temporal preparation and target salience on the N2pc as an index of spatial selection and the N1 as an index of perceptual discrimination. To manipulate target salience, we employed two different setsizes (i.e., a small or large number of homogeneous distractors). To manipulate temporal preparation, we presented a warning signal before the search display and we varied the length of the interval (foreperiod) between warning signal and search display in different blocks of trials (constant foreperiod paradigm). Replicating previous results, we observed that the N1 and the N2pc arose earlier in case of good temporal preparation. Importantly, the beneficial effect on the N2pc onset latency was stronger when the target salience was initially low (i.e., small setsize). This result provides evidence that temporal preparation influences bottom-up processing and, thereby, facilitates spatial selection.