Langner Robert, Steinborn Michael B, Eickhoff Simon B, Huestegge Lynn
Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, University of Düsseldorf.
Psychological Methods, Cognition, and Applied Research, University of Würzburg.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 2018 Sep;44(9):1313-1323. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000561. Epub 2018 Jul 5.
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
为行动时刻做准备会加快反应时间（RT）表现，即便事先并不知道具体的反应是什么。当准备间隔期，即前周期（FP），在各次试验之间不可预测地变化时，反应通常会随着FP时长的增加而变快。这种可变FP效应已被证明部分源于FP时长的逐次试验顺序效应，这些效应是不对称的，因为它们主要出现在短FP试验中，而不是长FP试验中。在两项实验中，我们研究了先前目标处理和反应产生的特定事件偏差是否以及如何影响可变FP效应和顺序FP效应。我们发现，命令性事件的逐次试验重复（相对于交替）在短FP试验中产生了反应时间优势，但在长FP试验中没有，几乎消除了可变FP效应，而顺序FP效应保持不变。这种在可变FP设置中对加速表现的不对称贡献表明，顺序性特定事件偏差可能非常短暂，不一定是指导基于时间的预期的心理表征的一个组成部分，或者可能在长FP试验中被高水平的非特异性准备所覆盖。总之，时间准备似乎是一种非特异性机制（即通常不与特定事件特征相关联），用于在心理时间线上对某些位置进行优先级排序，如果基于时间的准备较弱，则会叠加特定事件的短期偏差。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
