Citation

Brisson B, Spalek TM, Di Lollo V. Atten. Percept. Psychophys. 2011; 73(1): 42-52.

Affiliation

Department of psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, Benoit.Brisson@uqtr.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.3758/s13414-010-0003-8

PMID

21258908

Abstract

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.

Language: en