title: Temporal expectancy in the context of a theory of visual attention.
abstract: Temporal expectation is expectation with respect to the timing of an event such as the appearance of a certain stimulus. In this paper, temporal expectancy is investigated in the context of the theory of visual attention (TVA), and we begin by summarizing the foundations of this theoretical framework. Next, we present a parametric experiment exploring the effects of temporal expectation on perceptual processing speed in cued single-stimulus letter recognition with unspeeded motor responses. The length of the cue-stimulus foreperiod was exponentially distributed with one of six hazard rates varying between blocks. We hypothesized that this manipulation would result in a distinct temporal expectation in each hazard rate condition. Stimulus exposures were varied such that both the temporal threshold of conscious perception (t0 ms) and the perceptual processing speed (v letters s(-1)) could be estimated using TVA. We found that the temporal threshold t0 was unaffected by temporal expectation, but the perceptual processing speed v was a strikingly linear function of the logarithm of the hazard rate of the stimulus presentation. We argue that the effects on the v values were generated by changes in perceptual biases, suggesting that our perceptual biases are directly related to our temporal expectations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Center for Visual Cognition, University of Copenhagen, , Øster Farimagsgade 2A, 1353 Copenhagen K, Denmark.
authors.forename: Signe
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vangkilde
authors.forename: Anders
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Petersen
authors.forename: Claus
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bundesen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D059031:Anticipation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: perceptual processing speed; temporal expectation; theory of visual attention
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