Abstract
The Selective Tuning (ST) model of visual attention proposed that selection of an attended element includes suppression of the visual network portions that surround the attended element. When attending to a particular location or feature, processing of visual information at nearby locations or features is suppressed. Here, we investigated whether attending to a point in time leads to suppression at nearby time points. We presented a sequence of 11 letters at the screen’s center (SOA 100 ms). One of these letters was the target T, and observers indicated its orientation. In the informative blocks, the target appeared in the same frame within the sequence on most of the trials (‘expected’ condition). On the rest of the trials, the target appeared one or two frames before/after the most-probable frame (‘unexpected’ condition). The most-probable frame varied between blocks. The observers were told which is the most-probable frame at the beginning of the block. In the neutral block, the target appeared randomly in one of the frames. We found significantly higher accuracy in the expected condition than in the neutral and unexpected conditions, indicating that participants allocated temporal attention to the most-probable frame. Furthermore, when the target appeared after the expected frame, the accuracy was significantly lower in the unexpected frame compared to the same frame in the neutral condition, suggesting temporal suppression after the attended time. Consistent with ST's predictions, such an attention-driven temporal suppression may play a role in the precise timing required for dynamic visual behaviors.