How does exogenous alerting impact endogenous preparation on a temporal cueing task

ABSTRACT

Temporal attention is a cognitive mechanism that allows individuals to prepare to respond to an anticipated event. Lawrence, M. A., & Klein, R. M. (2013. Isolating exogenous and endogenous modes of temporal attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(2), 560–572. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029023) distinguished two forms of temporal attention: one elicited by purely endogenous alerting mechanisms and one elicited through exogenous alerting mechanisms. Recently, McCormick, C. R., Redden, R. S., Lawrence, M. A., & Klein, R. M. (2018. The independence of endogenous and exogenous temporal attention. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 80(8), 1885–1891. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-018-1575-y) found that these mechanisms generate additive effects on reaction time, however more informative speed and accuracy comparisons were not possible due to the effects being measured in a simple detection task. The current pair of experiments aims to compare two forms of temporal attention in a discrimination task while measuring both speed and accuracy by inducing methodological modifications that lower task demands. These manipulations were successful, as temporal cueing effects were observed for both the combined form and the less-studied purely endogenous form. However, speed-accuracy performance for these two forms of temporal attention did not align with our predictions based on prior work.

KEYWORDS:

• Attention
• temporal attention
• alerting

Author note

All participant data and experiment code, along with the analysis plan registered before any participant data was viewed, can be found at the following link: https://osf.io/vntg5/.

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible by a Discovery Grant awarded to RM Klein by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2021-02452) along with a NSERC Doctoral Scholarship for CR McCormick and a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship for RS Redden.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ANOVAs are a common form of analysis in the field of temporal cueing, although it is not appropriate for the binomial distribution that correct/incorrect error rate generates (Dixon, 2008).

2 Although target colour, which was confounded with responding hand (white = right), was not considered an important factor, it is worth noting that responses to white targets were about 15 ms faster than to black targets in both experiments. Because this was also true for the few left-handed participants that were collected (n = 4), it is not believed that this is due to hand dominance. Instead, the relative salience of the white targets on the grey background was greater than that of the black targets. Importantly, the target factor did not interact with temporal cuing and its effect has been ignored.

3 The numerical value that determines what a “dip” is was not set a priori and was determined using visual inspection of the reaction time bins.

4 This value deviates from the 75% useable trials indicated in the OSF preregistration. Seven of the 40 participants fall between the 70% to 75% range (70, 70, 71, 72, 73, 73, 74), but replacement was not possible due to Covid-19 restrictions.

5 At the request of an anonymous reviewer, the outcome of a RM ANOVA analysis of the data can be found in the “supplementary materials” section of our OSF page.

6 An additional analysis was run on error rates before the aforementioned exclusions (e.g., reaction time cut-offs, double-presses, switch responses, and responses which did not reach the indicated threshold). This post-hoc analysis did not generate evidence of an effect of signal, cue validity, or an interaction between those two factors, and as such the outcomes were the same as the planned error analysis.

7 This value deviates from the 75% useable trials indicated in the OSF preregistration. Three participants fall between the 70% to 75% range (70, 72, 72), but replacement was not possible due to Covid-19 restrictions.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible by a Discovery Grant awarded to RM Klein by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2021-02452) along with a NSERC CGS-D Doctoral Scholarship for CR McCormick and a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship for RS Redden.