The influence of voluntary actions on temporal preparation to visual stimuli

Humans and nonhuman animals can anticipate the timing of events to react fast and accurately, an ability called temporal preparation. Events in the environment can be initiated either externally or voluntarily, yet research on temporal preparation has so far focused mainly on externally initiated events. This study examined how voluntary actions influence temporal preparation for visual stimuli. Across four experiments conducted between 2022 and 2024, we compared reaction times using variable and constant foreperiods (FPs). In each experiment, target stimuli were self-initiated (action task) or externally initiated (external task), with FPs ranging from 0.6 to 2.8 s. Participants performed a go/no-go task (Experiment 1) or an orientation discrimination task (Experiments 2-4). We observed slower reaction times for self-initiated stimuli than for externally initiated stimuli, particularly at shorter FPs. The effect diminished as FP duration increased. This pattern was observed only in variable-FP experiments, indicating an interaction between voluntary actions and FP variability. In contrast, a constant-FP experiment did not show significant differences between action and external tasks. These findings suggest that voluntary actions influence temporal preparation in the presence of temporal uncertainty. We discuss how these results relate to current theories of temporal preparation, proposing new perspectives on the role of voluntary actions in shaping anticipatory behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).