Showing papers on "Attentional blink published in 2020"
TL;DR: The authors modelled behaviour and brain activity to show that the attentional blink arises from short- and long-range interactions between representations of elementary visual features, and suggest that feature selectivity is enhanced for correctly reported targets and suppressed when the same items are missed, whereas irrelevant distracting items are unaffected.
Abstract: The human brain is inherently limited in the information it can make consciously accessible. When people monitor a rapid stream of visual items for two targets, they typically fail to see the second target if it occurs within 200-500 ms of the first, a phenomenon called the attentional blink (AB). The neural basis for the AB is poorly understood, partly because conventional neuroimaging techniques cannot resolve visual events displayed close together in time. Here we introduce an approach that characterises the precise effect of the AB on behaviour and neural activity. We employ multivariate encoding analyses to extract feature-selective information carried by randomly-oriented gratings. We show that feature selectivity is enhanced for correctly reported targets and suppressed when the same items are missed, whereas irrelevant distractor items are unaffected. The findings suggest that the AB involves both short- and long-range neural interactions between visual representations competing for access to consciousness.
22 citations
TL;DR: Strong evidence of a self-bias, independent of familiarity, was found on both attentional blink and shape-label matching tasks, supporting the idea that self-biases across cognitive domains are distinct.
21 citations
TL;DR: It is concluded that the vabCPM and saCPM networks reflect general attentional functions that influence performance on many tasks, and may indicate an individual's propensity to deploy attention in a more diffuse or a more focused manner.
19 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the impact of two factors on people's selective attention to green advertisements: advertising creativity (by comparing creative vs. standard advertisements) and appeal type by comparing warning-based vs. vision-based appeals.
18 citations
TL;DR: 40-Hz BB stimulation during training accelerates the training outcome and auditory beats stimulation is a promising method of non-invasive brain stimulation for enhancing training and learning which is well-suited to rehabilitation training.
Abstract: This study investigated whether binaural beat stimulation could accelerate the training outcome in an attentional blink (AB) task. The AB refers to the lapse in detecting a target T2 in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) after the identification of a preceding target T1. Binaural beats (BB) are assumed to entrain neural oscillations and support cognitive function. Participants were assigned into two groups and presented with BB sounds while performing the AB task on three subsequent days in a cross-over design. Group A was presented with 40-Hz BB during the first day and 16 Hz during the second day, while the order of beat frequencies was reversed in Group B. No sound was presented on the third day. MEG recordings confirmed a strong entrainment of gamma oscillations during 40-Hz BB stimulation and smaller gamma entrainment with 16-Hz BB. The rhythm of the visual stimulation elicited 10-Hz oscillations in occipital MEG sensors which were of similar magnitude for both BB frequencies. The AB performance did not increase within a session. However, participants improved between sessions, with overall improvement equal in both groups. Group A improved more after the first day than the second day. In contrast, group B gained more from the 40 Hz stimulation on the second day than from 16-Hz stimulation on the first day. Taken together, 40-Hz BB stimulation during training accelerates the training outcome. The improvement becomes evident not immediately, but after consolidation during sleep. Therefore, auditory beats stimulation is a promising method of non-invasive brain stimulation for enhancing training and learning which is well-suited to rehabilitation training.
15 citations
TL;DR: Electroencephalogram results showed a significant reduction in resting state alpha oscillations that was most prominent centrally in the right hemisphere, and changes in individual alpha and delta power were also found to be related to changes in subjective sleepiness and PVT performance.
Abstract: Sleep is one of our most important physiological functions that maintains physical and mental health. Two studies examined whether discrete areas of attention are equally affected by sleep loss. This was achieved using a repeated-measures within-subjects design, with two contrasting conditions: normal sleep and partial sleep restriction of 5-h. Study 1 compared performance on a sustained attention task (Psychomotor Vigilance task; PVT) with performance on a transient attention task (Attentional Blink; AB). PVT performance, but not performance on the AB task, was impaired after sleep restriction. Study 2 sought to determine the neural underpinnings of the phenomenon, using electroencephalogram (EEG) frequency analysis, which measured activity during the brief eyes-closed resting state before the tasks. AB performance was unaffected by sleep restriction, despite clearly observable changes in brain activity. EEG results showed a significant reduction in resting state alpha oscillations that was most prominent centrally in the right hemisphere. Changes in individual alpha and delta power were also found to be related to changes in subjective sleepiness and PVT performance. Results likely reflect different levels of impairment in specific forms of attention following sleep loss.
11 citations
TL;DR: The results showed that the experts outperformed the non-experts in their detection rates of targets and suggest that experts were less prone to the AB effect, suggesting that long-term ARSG experience is related to improvements in temporal VSA.
Abstract: Action real-time strategy gaming (ARSG) is a cognitively demanding task which requires attention, sensorimotor skills, team cooperation and strategy-making abilities. A recent study found that ARSG experts had superior visual selective attention (VSA) for detecting the location of a moving object that could appear in one of 24 different peripheral locations(Qiu et al., 2018), suggesting that ARSG experience is related to improvements in the spatial component of VSA. However, the influence of ARSG experience on the temporal component of VSA – the detection of an item among a sequence of items presented consecutively and quickly at a single location – still remains understudied. Using behavioral and electrophysiological measures, this study examined whether ARSG experts had superior temporal VSA performance compared to non-experts in an attentional blink (AB) task, which is typically used to examine temporal VSA. We predicted that ARSG experts should exhibit superior performance to non-experts in the AB task. Results showed that the experts outperformed the non-experts in their detection rates of targets. Furthermore, compared to the non-experts, the experts had faster information processing as indicated by earlier P3 peak latencies in an AB period, more attentional resources distributed to targets as indicated by stronger P3 amplitudes, and a more flexible deployment of attentional resources. These findings suggest that experts were less prone to the AB effect. Thus, long-term ARSG experience is related to improvements in temporal VSA. The current findings support the benefit of video gaming experience on the development of VSA.
11 citations
TL;DR: The results provide new support for a causal role of the amygdala in emotional facilitation of visual attention, especially under conditions of increasing task-demands, and not limited to negative information, and suggest that such deficits may not be amenable to plasticity and compensation.
10 citations
TL;DR: Results suggest that standardized 8-week meditation programs may significantly change early stages of emotional stimuli processing while promoting a more balanced distribution of attentional resources towards emotional information.
Abstract: To efficiently handle the continuous flow of information to which the attentional system is exposed, humans are equipped with filters like the attentional blink (i.e., a failure to detect a second target when it is presented between 200 and 500 ms after the first one). The aim of this study was to examine whether the practice of two standardized meditation programs (i.e., mindfulness and compassion) could modify the allocation of attentional resources towards emotional information. A sample of 90 participants (43 in the mindfulness group and 47 in the compassion group) performed a variant of the emotional attentional blink task using negative, positive, and neutral faces, before and after the 8-week meditation programs. Both programs significantly decreased the standard AB effect (F(1.65, 145.58) = 39.79, p < .001, η2partial = .31) with only minor differences between them. Furthermore, the AB reduction after the programs varied according to the different emotional faces used (F(3.10, 272.83) = 4.44, p < .05, η2partial = .05). Results suggest that standardized 8-week meditation programs may significantly change early stages of emotional stimuli processing while promoting a more balanced distribution of attentional resources towards emotional information.
8 citations
TL;DR: The findings show that some core emotional content is implicitly processed from the LSF of hybrid T1s since the effects on temporal selective attention are emotion specific.
7 citations
TL;DR: The AB effect can predict the lowest flight performance score in military pilots and may have implications for the grounding and selection of Chinese military pilots.
Abstract: Objective In flight, military pilots need to monitor changes in the external environment and monitor the situation of the aircraft at the same time. Attentional blink (AB) reflects attentional blindness in time. Therefore, the present study investigated the AB effect in military pilots and its relationship with flight performance. Methods Thirty male military pilots (44.23 ± 4.07 years old) and 29 control participants (44.07 ± 2.93 years old) underwent testing with the classic rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. The participants' accuracy in detecting a second target stimulus (T2/T1) on the basis of their correctly response to the first target stimulus (T1) was calculated to measure the AB effect. The flight performance of these military pilots was also collected. Results The participants' accuracy in detecting T2/T1 at positions of 180, 270, 360, and 450 ms was significantly lower than that in detecting T1 in both groups. The military pilots' detection accuracy of T2/T1 at the positions of 180 ms (p < 0.001) and 270 ms (p < 0.001) was significantly higher than that of the control participants, and their mean detection accuracy of T2/T1 (AB effect) at the positions of 180, 270, 360, and 450 ms was also significantly higher than that of the control participants (p < 0.001). There was a significant correlation between the AB effect and the lowest flight performance score for the military pilots (r = 0.52, p = 0.004), and the regression coefficient was significant (β = 0.514, p = 0.004, R2 = 0.31). Conclusions Both groups experienced the AB effect, but the military pilots' performance regarding the AB effect was better than that of the control participants. The AB effect can predict the lowest flight performance score in military pilots. These findings may have implications for the grounding and selection of Chinese military pilots.
TL;DR: Under conditions of reduced attention in an attentional blink task, prioritized detection of faces associated with negative as compared to neutral person knowledge was observed, whereas facial trustworthiness did not affect detection, and only person knowledge impacted the access to consciousness.
TL;DR: It is found that AB magnitude correlated with the executive control functioning of working memory in behavior, which was fully mediated by T1 performance and disrupted the function of the lIFJ attenuated the AB deficit.
Abstract: The attentional blink (AB) has been central in characterizing the limit of temporal attention and consciousness. The neural mechanism of the AB is still in hot debate. With a large sample size, we combined multiple behavioral tests, multimodal MRI measures, and transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate the neural basis underlying the individual differences in the AB. We found that AB magnitude correlated with the executive control functioning of working memory (WM) in behavior, which was fully mediated by T1 performance. Structural variations in the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) and its intrinsic functional connectivity with the left inferior frontal junction (lIFJ) accounted for the individual differences in the AB, which was moderated by the executive control of working memory. Disrupting the function of the lIFJ attenuated the AB deficit. Our findings clarified the neural correlates of the individual differences in the AB and elucidated its relationship with the consolidation-driven inhibitory control process.
TL;DR: Across task conditions, there is no convincing evidence for the notion that conscious access is affected by rapid top-down selection-related modulations of the strength of early sensory representations induced by the preceding visual event, and these results cannot easily be explained by existing accounts of how attentional selection shapes conscious access under rapidly changing input conditions.
Abstract: Our senses are continuously bombarded with more information than our brain can process up to the level of awareness. The present study aimed to enhance understanding on how attentional selection shapes conscious access under conditions of rapidly changing input. Using an attention task, EEG, and multivariate decoding of individual target- and distractor-defining features, we specifically examined dynamic changes in the representation of targets and distractors as a function of conscious access and the task-relevance (target or distractor) of the preceding item in the RSVP stream. At the behavioral level, replicating previous work and suggestive of a flexible gating mechanism, we found a significant impairment in conscious access to targets (T2) that were preceded by a target (T1) followed by one or two distractors (i.e., the attentional blink), but striking facilitation of conscious access to targets shown directly after another target (i.e., lag-1 sparing and blink reversal). At the neural level, conscious access to T2 was associated with enhanced early- and late-stage T1 representations and enhanced late-stage D1 representations, and interestingly, could be predicted based on the pattern of EEG activation well before T1 was presented. Yet, across task conditions, we did not find convincing evidence for the notion that conscious access is affected by rapid top-down selection-related modulations of the strength of early sensory representations induced by the preceding visual event. These results cannot easily be explained by existing accounts of how attentional selection shapes conscious access under rapidly changing input conditions, and have important implications for theories of the attentional blink and consciousness more generally.
TL;DR: The results indicate that the benefit for happy and surprise expressions in comparison to angry expression identification is probably due to valence (more positive) and not arousal.
Abstract: Contribution of emotional valence and arousal to attentional processing over time is not fully understood. We employed a rapid serial visual paradigm (RSVP) in three experiments to investigate the role of valence and arousal. In three experiments, participants had to identify the expression of the two targets (experiment 1 - happy and angry; experiment 2 - angry and surprise; experiment 3 - happy and surprise) presented among neutral upright face distracters. In the first and third experiments, the two targets differed both in valence and arousal ratings. In experiment 2, the surprise and angry expressions differed in terms of valence but were matched for arousal. There was a happy expression advantage (lesser attentional blink) when the first target was anger (experiment 1) or surprise (experiment 3) and a surprise expression advantage when the first target was anger (experiment 2). There was a backward blink with reduced detection of the first target primarily by the relatively more positive valence second target. These results indicate that the benefit for happy and surprise expressions in comparison to angry expression identification is probably due to valence (more positive) and not arousal. Our results demonstrate a novel dynamic interplay of emotional information on temporal attention.
TL;DR: Although, overall, familiar targets were seen better than unfamiliar targets in both studies, stimulus familiarity did not reduce the relative perceptual impairments caused by emotional distractors.
Abstract: The visual system has been found to prioritise emotional stimuli so robustly that their presence can temporarily "blind" people to non-emotional targets in their direct line of vision. This has ostensible implications for the real world: medics must not be blinded to important information despite the trauma they confront, and drivers must not be blinded when passing emotionally engaging billboards. One possibility is that the familiarity of goal-relevant information can protect people's perception of it despite emotional distraction (e.g. drivers' perception might be less impaired by graphic ads when on a familiar road). In two experiments, we tested whether familiarity renders targets more perceptible following the presentation of an emotional distractor in two temporal attention tasks, emotion-induced blindness (Experiment 1) and the attentional blink (Experiment 2). Targets were pictures of familiar or unfamiliar locations. Although, overall, familiar targets were seen better than unfamiliar targets in both studies, stimulus familiarity did not reduce the relative perceptual impairments caused by emotional distractors.
TL;DR: It was concluded that the experience of varied levels of arousal and types of valence do not have separable influences on attention across time, rather, their influence is more consistent with emotion-specific mechanisms.
Abstract: Previous research has shown that emotions differentially influence attention across time, especially when the valence of the attended stimuli is congruent with the emotion of observer. Sadness produces a larger attentional blink while fear and happiness produce smaller attentional blinks. We report on four dual-task rapid serial visual presentation experiments in which participant emotion and the affective features of the first target (T1) were systematically varied to determine whether arousal and valence have unique and consistent influences on attention performance. All T1s connoted affect. Results showed that the emotional experience of negative affect with high arousal led to better second target (T2) detection than negative affect with low arousal. In conditions where positive affect was the experienced emotion, low arousal resulted in better T2 detection than high arousal. When participant arousal was held constant at a low level there were no differences in performance. When participant arousal was high, a cross-over effect was observed in which negative affect produced better performance than positive affect at early positions and negative affect produced better performance at late. The first targets in these experiments varied in arousal and valence to test for emotion congruent effects, but none were found. It was concluded that the experience of varied levels of arousal and types of valence do not have separable influences on attention across time. Rather, their influence is more consistent with emotion-specific mechanisms.
TL;DR: Data demonstrate, for the first time, that the same cerebellar regions are involved in both spatial and temporal visual attention, and suggest that performance suffers under conditions in which the rapid deployment of attention (either spatial or temporal) is required.
Abstract: The current study represents the first comprehensive examination of spatial, temporal and sustained attention following cerebellar damage. Results indicated that, compared to controls, cerebellar damage slowed the onset of inhibition of return (IOR) during the reflexive covert attention task, and reduced the ability to detect successive targets during an attentional blink task. However, cerebellar damage had minimal influence on voluntary covert attention or the sustained attention to response task (SART). Lesion overlay analysis indicated that impaired performance on IOR and the attentional blink were associated with damage to Crus II and lobule VII (tuber) and VIII (pyramis) of the left posterior cerebellum. Critically, subsequent analyses indicated our results are not due to either general motor impairments or to damage to the deep cerebellar nuclei. Collectively these data demonstrate, for the first time, that the same cerebellar regions are involved in both spatial and temporal visual attention.
TL;DR: This article proposes that task knowledge can be decomposed into skills, a task‐independent set of knowledge that can be reused for different tasks that could lead to more generalizable models.
Abstract: People can often learn new tasks quickly. This is hard to explain with cognitive models because they either need extensive task-specific knowledge or a long training session. In this article, we try to solve this by proposing that task knowledge can be decomposed into skills. A skill is a task-independent set of knowledge that can be reused for different tasks. As a demonstration, we created an attentional blink model from the general skills that we extracted from models of visual attention and working memory. The results suggest that this is a feasible modeling method, which could lead to more generalizable models.
TL;DR: The results showed moderate evidence against the attentional blink effect for voices independent of participants' musical expertise, and the musicianship advantage disappeared when the human voices served as the second target in the stream.
Abstract: Background: Attending to goal-relevant information can leave us metaphorically "blind" or "deaf" to the next relevant information while searching among distracters. This temporal cost lasting for about a half a second on the human selective attention has been long explored using the attentional blink paradigm. Although there is evidence that certain visual stimuli relating to one's area of expertise can be less susceptible to attentional blink effects, it remains unexplored whether the dynamics of temporal selective attention vary with expertise and objects types in the auditory modality. Methods: Using the auditory version of the attentional blink paradigm, the present study investigates whether certain auditory objects relating to musical and perceptual expertise could have an impact on the transient costs of selective attention. In this study, expert cellists and novice participants were asked to first identify a target sound, and then to detect instrumental timbres of cello or organ, or human voice as a second target in a rapid auditory stream. Results: The results showed moderate evidence against the attentional blink effect for voices independent of participants' musical expertise. Experts outperformed novices in their overall accuracy levels of target identification and detection, reflecting a clear benefit of musical expertise. Importantly, the musicianship advantage disappeared when the human voices served as the second target in the stream. Discussion: The results are discussed in terms of stimulus salience, the advantage of voice processing, as well as perceptual and musical expertise in relation to attention and working memory performances.
TL;DR: There is no cost associated with the initiation of an attentional episode, whereas explicit conscious detection comes at a price, demonstrating the temporal flexibility of attention and highlighting the potential role of subjective awareness in understanding processing limitations.
Abstract: The attentional blink refers to the finding that when two visual targets appear within 200-500 ms, observers often miss the second target. In three experiments, we disentangle the roles of spatial attention to and conscious report of the first event in eliciting this cost. We show that allocating spatial attention to the first event is not necessary for a blink to occur: the full temporal pattern of the blink arises when the first event is consciously detected, despite the fact that it is not spatially attended, whereas no cost is observed when the first event is missed. We then show that spatial attention is also not sufficient for eliciting a blink, though it can deepen the blink when accompanied by conscious detection. These results demonstrate that there is no cost associated with the initiation of an attentional episode, whereas explicit conscious detection comes at a price. These findings demonstrate the temporal flexibility of attention and underscore the potential role of subjective awareness in understanding processing limitations, although this role may be contingent on the encoding in working memory necessary for conscious report.
TL;DR: Emotion and task relevancy of emotional distractor appears to influence attention biases in HTA individuals and individual characteristics modulate the magnitude and time window of the attentional blink in the context of EIB and EAB tasks.
Abstract: It is unknown whether high-trait anxiety (HTA) individuals show facilitated attention or impaired attentional disengagement. In the present study, we have manipulated emotion and task relevance to ...
TL;DR: Evidence is shown for a dissociation between experience and reportability, whereby participants appear able to encode stimuli into working memory with little, if any, conscious experience of them.
Abstract: We explore an intensely debated problem in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy: the degree to which the “phenomenological consciousness” of the experience of a stimulus is separable from the “access consciousness” of its reportability. Specifically, it has been proposed that these two measures are dissociated from one another in one, or both directions. However, even if it was agreed that reportability and experience were doubly dissociated, the limits of dissociation logic mean we would not be able to conclusively separate the cognitive processes underlying the two. We take advantage of computational modelling and recent advances in state-trace analysis to assess this dissociation in an attentional/experiential blink paradigm. These advances in state-trace analysis make use of Bayesian statistics to quantify the evidence for and against a dissociation. Further evidence is obtained by linking our finding to a prominent model of the attentional blink – the Simultaneous Type/Serial Token model. Our results show evidence for a dissociation between experience and reportability, whereby participants appear able to encode stimuli into working memory with little, if any, conscious experience of them. This raises the possibility of a phenomenon that might be called sight-blind recall, which we discuss in the context of the current experience/reportability debate.
TL;DR: A double-blind crossover pharmacological study in which cabergoline—a dopamine D2 agonist—and placebo are administered to 30 healthy participants found no evidence in support of an effect of Cabergoline on conscious perception, casting doubt on a causal role for dopamine in visual perception.
Abstract: Conscious perception is thought to depend on global amplification of sensory input. In recent years, striatal dopamine has been proposed to be involved in gating information and conscious access, due to its modulatory influence on thalamocortical connectivity. Since much of the evidence that implicates striatal dopamine is correlational, we conducted a double-blind crossover pharmacological study in which we administered cabergoline—a dopamine D2 agonist—and placebo to 30 healthy participants. Under both conditions, we subjected participants to several well-established experimental conscious-perception paradigms, such as backward masking and the attentional blink task. We found no evidence in support of an effect of cabergoline on conscious perception: key behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) findings associated with each of these tasks were unaffected by cabergoline. Our results cast doubt on a causal role for dopamine in visual perception. It remains an open possibility that dopamine has causal effects in other tasks, perhaps where perceptual uncertainty is more prominent.
TL;DR: It is found that valid predictions increased subjective visibility reports and discrimination of T2s, but only when predictions were generated by a consciously accessed T1, irrespective of the timing at which the effects were measured.
Abstract: Predictions in the visual domain have been shown to modulate conscious access. Yet, little is known about how predictions may do so and to what extent they need to be consciously implemented to be effective. To address this, we administered an attentional blink (AB) task in which target 1 (T1) identity predicted target 2 (T2) identity, while participants rated their perceptual awareness of validly versus invalidly predicted T2s (Experiment 1 & 2) or reported T2 identity (Experiment 3). Critically, we tested the effects of conscious and non-conscious predictions, after seen and unseen T1s, on T2 visibility. We found that valid predictions increased subjective visibility reports and discrimination of T2s, but only when predictions were generated by a consciously accessed T1, irrespective of the timing at which the effects were measured (short vs. longs lags). These results further our understanding of the intricate relationship between predictive processing and consciousness.
TL;DR: A hybrid of the RSVP and double-rectangle paradigms was used and the results revealed that when the object representation was inhibited by T1 processing, the AB effect spread across the object groupings showing an enhanced same-object AB effect.
TL;DR: It is concluded that consciously perceiving a task-relevant event causes the blink, possibly because it triggers encoding of this event into WM, as well as for the relationship between spatial attention, conscious perception and WM.
TL;DR: The results suggest that the nature of the concurrent visual search process is a determinant responsible for the dynamic relationship between perceptual attention deployed for visual search and central attention needed for working memory encoding and response selection.
Abstract: It is well known that human information processing comprises several distinct subprocesses-namely, the perceptual, central, and motor stage. In each stage, attention plays an important role. Specifically, a type of attention-perceptual attention-operates to detect and identify a sensory input. Following this, another class of attention-central attention-is involved in working memory encoding and response selection at the central stage. While perceptual attention and central attention are known to be separate, distinct processes, some researchers reported findings that loading central attention postponed the deployment of perceptual attention needed to perform a spatial configuration search. We tested whether a similar pattern of results would emerge when a different kind of search task is used. To do so, we had participants perform a visual-search task of searching for a feature conjunction target, taxing perceptual attention while they are engaged in central processes, such as working memory encoding and response selection. The results showed that perceptual processing of conjunction search stimuli could be carried out concurrently with central processes. These results suggest that the nature of the concurrent visual search process is a determinant responsible for the dynamic relationship between perceptual attention deployed for visual search and central attention needed for working memory encoding and response selection.
TL;DR: Replicating the classic EAB phenomenon, a strong impairment in target discrimination when an emotional distractor shortly preceded the target is found, and it is argued that these results are consistent with an interactive race model of the competition between stimulus representations in the conflict between top-down and bottom-up attentional mechanisms.
Abstract: The emotional attentional blink (EAB), also referred to as emotion-induced blindness, refers to a transient impairment in the ability to discriminate a single target when it is presented closely in time to an emotional distractor. Although the EAB has typically been characterized as representing a complete loss of target information due to attentional capture by the emotional distractors, it is unclear whether the impact of the emotional distractor is in fact discrete or graded. Here, we tested whether the emotional distractor of the EAB interfered with target processing in a continuous or all-or-none manner by measuring changes in both reaction time (RT) and target-vividness ratings in addition to target-discrimination accuracy. Rapid sequences of landscape images were presented centrally, and participants reported the orientation of a ± 90° rotated target as quickly and accurately as possible. Replicating the classic EAB phenomenon, we found a strong impairment in target discrimination when an emotional distractor shortly preceded the target, and we also found a moderate impairment when the target preceded an emotional distractor. This decrement in accuracy at short lags was accompanied by increases in RT to the target as well as lower ratings of subjective target vividness even when the target was detected, indicating that emotional distractors impacted target processing in a lag-dependent, graded manner. We argue that these results are consistent with an interactive race model of the competition between stimulus representations in the conflict between top-down and bottom-up attentional mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
TL;DR: The results provided clear evidence for the contribution of categorical similarity to the temporal integration in the AB and found that the order reversals were significantly higher in the same-category condition than that in the different- category condition.
Abstract: Attentional blink (AB) speaks to a phenomenon that, when reporting two targets in a rapid serial visual presentation, the second target (T2) is often missed if it followed the first target (T1) within an interval of less than 500 ms. An interesting exception is the preserved performance of T2 at Lag 1 position (Lag-1 sparing), or even in an extended period, which recently has been termed temporal integration. Both T1 and T2 can be successfully reported but with a loss of their temporal order. The integration has been attributed to the temporal distance between the two targets. However, previous studies on temporal perception have revealed that similarity between two stimuli modulated their temporal order judgment, suggesting that temporal integration is affected by stimulus characteristics. In the present study, we investigated whether stimulus characteristics modulated temporal integration in the AB. We manipulated the categorical similarity between T1 and T2 targets and found that the order reversals were significantly higher in the same-category condition than that in the different-category condition. Our results thus provided clear evidence for the contribution of categorical similarity to the temporal integration in the AB.