Temporal Probability-Guided Shifts in Temporal Preparation Away from the Beat Under a Distracting Rhythm in Aging

Temporal preparation has been consistently shown to be driven by regular rhythms, which are commonly considered to automatically attract attentional resources to on-beat moments, facilitating behavioral performance relative to off-beat moments in both younger and older adults. However, when targets occur more often at off-beat moments such that the rhythm becomes task-disadvantageous, it remains unclear whether older adults can adjust preparatory resources away from on-beat moments and toward the high-probability time point. To address this issue, younger and older adults completed a temporal preparation task at fast (800 ms) and slow (2000 ms) tempos under three conditions: attend-on-beat (rhythmic sequence; 80% on-beat targets), attend-off-beat (rhythmic sequence; 80% off-beat targets), and random (nonrhythmic sequence; 50% each). The results showed that, relative to the random condition, both age groups responded faster at the instructed high-probability time point in both rhythmic conditions, even when it fell off-beat, indicating that temporal probabilities can guide temporal preparation away from a task-disadvantageous on-beat moment toward the task-relevant time point. Moreover, this pattern was observed under both the fast and slow tempos. Together, these findings suggest that older adults preserve the ability to use temporal probabilities to reduce rhythmic distraction across sub-second and supra-second time scales.