Action and time: effects of voluntary actions on temporal preparation and learning of temporal patterns

• Grant number: 21/11973-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: July 01, 2022
• End date: February 15, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: André Mascioli Cravo
• Grantee: Alexandre de Pontes Nobre
• Host Institution: Centro de Matemática, Computação e Cognição (CMCC). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 24/11864-0 - The role of uncertainty on the influence of voluntary actions on temporal preparation., BE.EP.PD

Abstract

Two essential processes for the interaction between humans and their environment are voluntary actions and temporal preparation (or temporal expectation). Individuals navigate in their environment through voluntary actions and interact with the effects of those actions. At the same time, they build expectations about the stimuli with which they are presented, including expectations about how long a stimulus will take to appear. These expectations allow for more efficient responses to those stimuli. It has been established that actions influence perceptual processing of visual stimuli, but evidence on the role of voluntary action in temporal preparation is scarce. This project aims to investigate whether voluntary actions influence temporal preparation and learning of temporal patterns of visual stimulus presentation. Four experiments are proposed. The first experiment will investigate whether voluntary actions facilitate temporal preparation for visual stimuli compared to situations in which the external environment causes such stimuli. The second and the third experiments aim to investigate if voluntary actions facilitate learning distributions of time intervals of visual stimulus presentation. The fourth experiment will investigate if voluntary actions influence temporal preparation for visual stimuli, perceptual processing of those stimuli, or both. (AU)