Triviño, M. 1 , Arnedo, M. 2 , Lupiañez, J. 2 , Chirivella, J. 3 & Correa, A. 2
1 Hospital Universitario San Rafael. Granada, Spain
2 Departamento de Psicología Experimental y Fisiología del Comportamiento. Universidad de Granada. Granada, Spain.
3 Hospital Nisa Aguas Vivas. Valencia, Spain.
The main aim of this study was to explore whether the use of automatic temporal preparation processes can overcome the deficit in the controlled temporal preparation processes shown by patients with frontal damage (i.e. Temporal Orienting and Foreperiod effects). Two tasks were administered to a group of 15 frontal patients, and a group of 15 matched control subjects: a Symbolic Cued task where the predictive information was provided by a symbolic cue (short line-early vs. long line-late) and a Rhythm Cued task where the predictive information was provided by a rhythm (fast rhythm-early vs. slow rhythm-late). Firstly, in the Symbolic Cued task, patients with right frontal damage showed a specific deficit in Temporal Orienting effect, while the Foreperiod effect was impaired in both groups of patients. Secondly, in the Rhythm Cued task, there was an improvement of both Temporal Orienting and Foreperiod effects in right frontal group, while the left frontal group showed a significant deficit of both effects. These findings show that automatic processes of temporal preparation facilitate the use of implicit temporal information, as well as they provide a novel suggestion for a neural model in which automatic temporal preparation is left-lateralized and controlled temporal preparation is right-lateralized.