Effect on Temporal Expectancy of the Position of a Selected Foreperiod within a Range

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to examine temporal expectancy, which was measured by reaction time to a light following a variable foreperiod interval (FP). Three, overlapping, consecutive ranges having a common FP (2.5 sec.) were used. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of the three ranges. A deviation-score was obtained for each subject. Analyses of variance for deviation scores and for mean reaction time scores for two experiments yielded F's significant at the .05 and .01 levels. It appeared that reaction time was slowest when the common FP was the lower limit of the range and fastest when the common FP was the upper limit of the range. It was concluded that under the conditions of the experiments temporal expectancy increased as the upper limit of the range was approached.