Pre-target oscillatory brain activity and the attentional blink.
Reporting the second of two targets within a stream of distracting words during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) is impaired when the targets are separated by a single distractor word, a deficit in temporal attention that has been referred to as the attentional blink (AB). Recent conceptual and empirical work has pointed to pre-target brain states as potential mediators of the AB effect. The current study examined differences in pre-target electrophysiology between correctly and incorrectly reported trials, considering amplitude and phase measures of alpha oscillations as well as the steady-state visual evoked potential (ssVEP) evoked by the RSVP stream. For incorrectly reported trials, relatively lower alpha-band power and greater ssVEP inter-trial phase locking were observed during extended time periods preceding presentation of the first target. These results suggest that facilitated processing of the pre-target distracter stream indexed by reduced alpha and heightened phase locking characterizes a dynamic brain state that predicts lower accuracy in terms of reporting the second target under strict temporal constraints. Findings align with hypotheses in which the AB effect is attributed to neurocognitive factors such as fluctuations in pre-target attention or to cognitive strategies applied at the trial level.
Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, University of Florida, PO Box 112766, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA. npetro@ufl.edu.|Department of Psychology, University of Florida, PO Box 112766, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA. npetro@ufl.edu.
Nathan M
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7553-4459
NM
Petro
Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention, University of Florida, PO Box 112766, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA.|Department of Psychology, University of Florida, PO Box 112766, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA.
Andreas
A
Keil
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D054518:Attentional Blink / Q000502:physiology*; D058256:Brain Waves / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
Attention control; Electroencephalography (EEG); Oscillatory activity; Steady-state visual evoked potential (ssVEP); Visual rapid serial processing