Dissociating the effects of featural and conceptual interference on multiple target processing in rapid serial visual presentation.
Attentional blink (AB) describes the finding that, when subjects attend to a specified target in a rapidly presented visual stream, they show a decreased ability to process a subsequent probe item for up to 600 msec. In the present study, the roles of featural and conceptual interference in the processing of targets and probes in a rapid serial visual presentation stream were examined. In Experiment 1, featurally more complex T + 1 items produced larger AB even when the physical energy of the stimulus (e.g., the number of pixels) was held constant. In Experiment 2, the conceptual category of the T + 1 item affected target identification but not AB magnitude. These result suggest that featural interference is a major determinant of AB magnitude, whereas featural and conceptual interference both affect target identification.
McAuliffe
S P
SP
Department of Psychology, UCLA 90095, USA.
Knowlton
B J
BJ
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001767:Blinking / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*