Electrophysiological evidence for independent consolidation of multiple targets.
When observers are asked to identify two targets (T1 and T2) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation, they frequently fail to identify T2 if it appears 200-500 ms after T1 (attentional blink). The response to T2 is, however, unimpaired if it appears directly after T1 (lag-1 sparing). Furthermore, when another target immediately follows T2, the identification accuracy for the third target is also unimpaired (lag-2 sparing). It was unclear whether multiple targets were consolidated into working memory simultaneously or independently during lag-2 sparing. We observed the P3 component of the event-related potential to examine this issue. Three separable P3 components, corresponding to the three targets, were obtained when lag-2 sparing occurred, suggesting that each target can be consolidated independently.
Kihara
Ken
K
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan. ken-kihara@aist.go.jp
Kawahara
Jun-ichiro
J
Takeda
Yuji
Y
D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001767:Blinking / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004594:Electrophysiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*