The Developing Predictive Brain: How Implicit Temporal Expectancy Induced by Local and Global Prediction Shapes Action Preparation Across Development

Human behavior is continuously shaped not just as a function of explicitly responding to external world events but also by internal biases implicitly driven by the capacity to extract statistics from complex sensory patterns. Two possible sources of predictability engaged to generate and update temporal expectancy are the implicit extraction of either local or global statistical contingencies in the events’ temporal structure. In the context of action preparation the local prediction has been reported to be stable from the age of 6. However, there is no evidence about how the ability to extract and use global statistical patterns to establish temporal expectancy changes across development. Here we used a new, child‐friendly reaction time task purposely designed to investigate how local (within‐trial expectancy bias) and global (between‐block expectancy bias) prediction interplay to generate temporal expectancy and consequently shape action preparation in young (5‐ to 6‐year‐old), middle‐aged (7‐ to 8‐year‐old) and old (9‐ to 10‐year‐old) typically developing children. We found that while local temporal prediction showed stable developmental trajectories, the ability to use a global rule to action preparation in terms of both accuracy and speed becomes stable after the age of seven. These findings are discussed by adopting a neuroconstructivist‐inspired theoretical account, according to which the developmental constraints on learning from hierarchically nested levels of sensory complexity may constitute a necessary prerequisite for mastering complex domains.