title: Top-down control is not lost in the attentional blink: evidence from intact endogenous cueing.
abstract: The attentional blink (AB) refers to the finding that performance on the second of two targets (T1 and T2) is impaired when the targets are presented at a target onset asynchrony (TOA) of less than 500 ms. One account of the AB assumes that the processing load of T1 leads to a loss of top-down control over stimulus selection. The present study tested this account by examining whether an endogenous spatial cue that indicates the location of a following T2 can facilitate T2 report even when the cue and T2 occur within the time window of the AB. Results from three experiments showed that endogenous cuing had a significant effect on T2 report, both during and outside of the AB; this cuing effect was modulated by both the cue-target onset asynchrony and by cue validity, while it was invariant to the AB. These results suggest that top-down control over target selection is not lost during the AB.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China. zhang.dexuan@gmail.com
authors.forename: Dexuan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Liping
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Shao
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nieuwenstein
authors.forename: Xiaolin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D054518:Attentional Blink / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology