On the role of intervening distractors in the attentional blink.
The attentional blink (AB) refers to the decline in accurate report for a second target (T2) when presented within about 500 ms of a first target (T1) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation stream of distractors. It is debated whether the distractors presented shortly after T1 cause the AB directly, as is proposed by distractor-based models, or can modulate its amplitude only indirectly by increasing T1 difficulty, as is proposed by capacity-based models. To investigate this issue, an intervening distractor was presented at lag 1 (T1 + 1), at lag 2 (T1 + 2), or at neither of these two lags (no distractor). T2 was presented at either lag 3 or 9. An AB was observed even in the absence of intervening distractors, indicating that distractors are not necessary to produce an AB. Nonetheless, the T1 + 2 distractor did modulate the AB directly, without influencing T1 performance. Neither theory can fully account for the results but can do so given some modifications.
Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. Benoit.Brisson@uqtr.ca
Benoit
B
Brisson
Thomas M
TM
Spalek
Vincent
V
Di Lollo
D001288:Attention; D054518:Attentional Blink; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D012691:Serial Learning