title: Minds on the blink: the relationship between inattentional blindness and attentional blink.
abstract: Failures of conscious visual awareness occur when specific task demands prevent an observer from detecting a stimulus that would otherwise be clearly visible. Two examples are inattentional blindness (IB) and attentional blink (AB). IB is the failure to detect an unexpected stimulus when attention is otherwise engaged. AB describes the inability to detect a second target that is presented within 180-500 ms of the first target. Previous research has suggested that similar cognitive processes underlie both IB and AB; however, they are distinct phenomena, and no evidence has directly linked the two. We tested the same group of observers on an IB task and an AB task. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that "non-noticers" who failed to detect an unexpected stimulus in the IB task also demonstrated a larger AB effect. This suggests that some observers may be more generally susceptible to failures of conscious visual awareness, regardless of specific context.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia. vanessa.beanland@monash.edu
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Beanland
authors.forename: Kristen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pammer
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D054518:Attentional Blink; D001364:Awareness; D003118:Color Perception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011930:Reaction Time; D018910:Video Games; D055815:Young Adult