Topic
Attentional blink
About: Attentional blink is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1346 publications have been published within this topic receiving 53064 citations. The topic is also known as: Attentional blinks.
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TL;DR: Temporary visual deficits can be induced by otherwise neutral distractors whose aversive associations have only recently been learned.
Abstract: The current study examines whether aversively conditioned stimuli can modulate attention to such a degree that they impair the perception of subsequently presented nonemotional targets. In the initial phase of this study, participants viewed 3 categories of photographs, 1 of which was paired with an aversive noise. Following conditioning, participants searched for a target embedded within a series of 17 rapidly presented images on each trial. Critically, a conditioned or unconditioned item from the initial phase appeared 200 ms or 800 ms before the target. At 200-ms lags but not 800-ms lags, the conditioned images impaired target detection relative to the other distractors. Thus, temporary visual deficits can be induced by otherwise neutral distractors whose aversive associations have only recently been learned.
157 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that affective significance potentially determines the fate of a visual item during competitive interactions by enhancing sensory processing through both direct and indirect paths, and that the amygdala helps separate the significant from the mundane.
Abstract: If the amygdala is involved in shaping perceptual experience when affectively significant visual items are encountered, responses in this structure should be correlated with both visual cortex responses and behavioral reports. Here, we investigated how affective significance shapes visual perception during an attentional blink paradigm combined with aversive conditioning. Behaviorally, following aversive learning, affectively significant scenes (CS+) were better detected than neutral (CS−) ones. In terms of mean brain responses, both amygdala and visual cortical responses were stronger during CS+ relative to CS− trials. Increased brain responses in these regions were associated with improved behavioral performance across participants and followed a mediation-like pattern. Importantly, the mediation pattern was observed in a trial-by-trial analysis, revealing that the specific pattern of trial-by-trial variability in brain responses was closely related to single-trial behavioral performance. Furthermore, the influence of the amygdala on visual cortical responses was consistent with a mediation, although partial, via frontal brain regions. Our results thus suggest that affective significance potentially determines the fate of a visual item during competitive interactions by enhancing sensory processing through both direct and indirect paths. In so doing, the amygdala helps separate the significant from the mundane.
157 citations
TL;DR: Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), differences of neural activation were studied in an attentional blink experiment in order to identify brain regions putatively involved in controlling the access of information to consciousness.
156 citations
TL;DR: There is a delay between detection and the selection of target candidates for consolidation in short-term memory during the attentional blink, resulting in improvement in T2 report, suggesting that processing of T1 was already completed or was at least protected when the cue was presented.
Abstract: Observers often miss the 2nd of 2 visual targets (first target [T1] and second target [T2]) when these targets are presented closely in time; the attentional blink (AB). The authors hypothesized that the AB occurs because the attentional response to T2 is delayed by T1 processing, causing T2 to lose a competition for attention to the item that follows it. The authors investigated this hypothesis by determining whether the AB is attenuated when T2 is precued. The results from 4 experiments showed that the duration and magnitude of the AB were substantially reduced when T2 was precued. The observed improvement in T2 report did not occur at the expense of T1 report, suggesting that processing of T1 was already completed or was at least protected when the cue was presented. The authors conclude that, during the AB, there is a delay between detection and the selection of target candidates for consolidation in short-term memory.
154 citations
TL;DR: Williams et al. as discussed by the authors showed that the probability of behaviorally failing to correctly identify the second target can be predicted from the amount of attentional resources devoted to processing the first target, as indexed by T1 activation.
Abstract: Humans have di⁄culty processing more than one event at a time, as is evidenced by the attentional blink (‘blink’) phenomenon: the second of two targets in a visual stream of events cannot be reported accurately if it appears between 100 and 500 ms after the ¢rst. By using whole-head magnetoencephalography, we show that the probability of behaviourally failing to correctly identify the second target can be predicted from the amount of attentional resources devoted to processing the ¢rst target, as indexed byT1 activation. This important ¢nding supports resource sharing accounts of divided attention tasks such as the ‘blink’; that is, such tasks may re£ect an individual processing strategy rather than an immutable structural processing bottleneck. NeuroReport 17:163^166 � c 2006 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
153 citations