Temporal expectation driven by rhythmic cues compared to that driven by symbolic cues provides a more precise attentiona
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Temporal expectation driven by rhythmic cues compared to that driven by symbolic cues provides a more precise attentional focus in time Zhihan Xu 1,2 & Yanna Ren 2,3 & Ting Guo 2 & Aijun Wang 4,5 & Takanori Nakao 2 & Yoshimichi Ejima 2 & Jiajia Yang 2 & Satoshi Takahashi 2 & Jinglong Wu 2,6 & Qiong Wu 2,7 & Ming Zhang 4,5,7 Accepted: 21 September 2020 # The Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2020
Abstract Temporal expectation is the ability to select the precise point in time for doing something to produce an optimal effect. Two sources of information that humans use to generate temporal expectations are rhythmic and symbolic cues. Both types of cues have been proven effective in directing attention to a future point in time resulting in improved performance. However, the temporal precision of the two forms of temporal expectation have rarely been compared. In the current study, 17 participants performed two temporal expectation tasks in which either a rhythmic cue or a symbolic cue indicated that a future target would appear after a 500-ms (short) or 1,500-ms (long) interval; the target appeared at the expected time in 54% of trials and at an unexpected earlier or later interval in 36% of trials. In both tasks, we observed that the reaction time (RT) curves were U-shaped, with a slower RT for the earlier and later unexpected intervals and a faster RT for intervals approaching the expected point in time. Furthermore, we found a significant interaction between task and the quadratic term of temporal expectation, which indicates that the U-shaped RT curves for the rhythmic cue task are steeper than those for the symbolic cue task. Thus, the current results revealed that compared with symbolic cues, temporal expectation driven by rhythmic cues provides a more precise attentional focus in time. Keywords Rhythm . Symbolic . Temporal expectation . U-shaped curve . Temporal window
Introduction Temporal expectation refers to the process of focusing attention on a specific point in time to optimize behaviour, which is a fundamental survival ability in our daily lives. Humans rely on two sources of information to generate temporal expectations: rhythmic cues, if available, and symbolic cues.
Rhythmically defined temporal expectation has been suggested to be a stimulus-driven orientation of attention in time (Breska & Deouell, 2014; Rohenkohl, Coull, & Nobre, 2011). When participants experience a non-random temporal structure, they can spontaneously adapt to the temporal regularity and build a temporal pattern of the fixed interval, which can be used to predict the likely point in time when the next event
Zhihan Xu and Yanna Ren contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors. * Qiong Wu [email protected] * Ming Zhang [email protected] 1
2
Department of Foreign Language, Ningbo University of Technology, Ningbo 315211, Zhejiang, China Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Okayama 7008530, Japan
3
Department of Psychology, College of H
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