Unifying temporal preparation: The temporal preparation task (TEP-Task)

Abstract

The dynamic nature of our environment allows us to anticipate the onset of relevant events, enhancing our responses to them. Temporal preparation can be assessed in the laboratory using various tasks, including foreperiod tasks, temporal orienting tasks, and rhythmic tasks. However, the existing literature lacks a unified task to measure the most common temporal preparation effects (i.e., foreperiod, sequential, temporal orienting, and rhythmic effects) in a single session. The main goal of the present study was to fill this gap by devising the temporal preparation task (TEP-Task) to measure temporal preparation effects in a single 35-min testing session. Besides its utility in single-session assessments, the TEP-Task may also serve for future research across diverse populations and experimental demands.