Abstract
Anticipating future events’ occurrence helps us prepare for daily activities. When initiated by a warning signal without specific response-related information, this preparation process is regarded as non-specific. Previous research reported that the intertrial repetition of a stimulus-response event in choice-reaction tasks shortened reaction time more at the short foreperiod. Four experiments were conducted to investigate the relation between preparation and event sequence. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that manipulating the preparation effect did not affect its interaction with event sequence. In Experiment 3, this interaction was diminished by a long intertrial interval. The fourth experiment compared alerting and no-alerting conditions and demonstrated the existence of sequential modulations (including event sequence) in phasic alertness paradigms. Despite the existence of their interaction, the findings do not support a direct connection between preparation and event sequence. Moreover, sequential effects like that of event sequence could potentially cause misinterpretation and miscalculation of preparation effects.