No commonality between attentional capture and attentional blink.
Visual search for a unique target is impaired when a salient distractor is presented (attentional capture). This phenomenon is said to occur because attention is diverted to a distractor before it reaches the target. Similarly, perception of the second of two targets embedded in a rapid stream of nontargets is impaired, suggesting attentional deprivation due to the processing of the first target (attentional blink). We examined whether these phenomena emerge from a common underlying attentional mechanism by using correlation studies. If these phenomena share a common foundation, the magnitude of these deficits should show within-subject correlations. Participants (N = 135) revealed significant attentional deficits during spatial and temporal capture and the attentional blink tasks. However, no significant correlation was found among these tasks. Experiment 2 (N = 95) replicated this finding using the same procedure as that used in Experiment 1 but included another attentional blink task that required spatial switching between the two targets. Strong correlations emerged only between the two attentional blink tasks (with/without spatial switching). The present results suggest that attentional deficits during spatial and temporal capture and the attentional blink tasks reflect different aspects of attention.
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan. jun.kawahara@aist.go.jp
Jun I
JI
Kawahara
Ken
K
Kihara
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D054518:Attentional Blink / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult