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.

Rapid serial processing of natural scenes: Color modulates detection but neither recognition nor the attentional blink

Abstract: The exact function of color vision for natural-scene perception has remained puzzling. In rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tasks, categorically defined targets (e.g., animals) are detected typically slightly better for color than for grayscale stimuli. Here we test the effect of color on animal detection, recognition, and the attentional blink. We present color and grayscale RSVP sequences with up to two target images (animals) embedded. In some conditions, we modify either the hue or the intensity of each pixel. We confirm a benefit of color over grayscale images for animal detection over a range of stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), with improved hit rates from 50 to 120 ms and overall improved performance from 90 to 120 ms. For stimuli in which the hue is inverted, performance is similar to grayscale for small SOAs and indistinguishable from original color only for large SOAs. For subordinate category discrimination, color provides no additional benefit. Color and grayscale sequences show an attentional blink, but differences between color and grayscale are fully explained by single-target differences, ruling out the possibility that the color benefit is purely attentional.

Effect of Cognitive Aging on Working Memory Consolidation

Abstract: This study was conducted to investigate the hypothesis that the decline in memory consolidation in aging may be determined by the reduction of inhibitory control processes. To this end an Attentional Blink (AB) paradigm was employed. AB effect was more pronounced and lengthened for older adults (60–85 years) than young (18–22 years) and middle aged (45–55 years) groups, which could be due to interference at the perceptual stage itself. The onset of the first target involuntarily captures attentional resources, impairing subsequent target identification due to decrease in inhibitory control. Experiment 2 was conducted manipulating perceptual load in working memory to study interference as a function of load. The effect of load was more pronounced for older and middle-aged adults. The decline in memory consolidation in this group may be due to difficulties in early stages of perceptual processing, inhibitory control and unsuccessful suppression of irrelevant stimuli. These effects were also observed among middle-aged individuals.

Alerting enhances target identification but does not affect the magnitude of the attentional blink.

Abstract: Identification of the second of two targets is impaired when presented less than about 500 ms after the first. The magnitude of this attentional blink (AB) is known to be modulated by tonic factors (e.g., observer’s state of relaxation). The present work examined the effects of a phasic change in observer’s state brought about by an alerting stimulus (an aggregate of faint rings) presented in temporal proximity to either letter-target inserted in a temporal stream (RSVP) of digit distractors. In four experiments, identification accuracy of each target was substantially improved by presenting the alerting stimulus either in the target’s frame or in the preceding RSVP frame. However, alerting did not modulate the magnitude of the AB. The appearance of an alerting effect on the AB in Experiment 1 was ascribed to a ceiling effect in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 ruled out endogenous temporal cueing effects; Experiment 4 examined the temporal gradient of alerting. Independence of the alerting and AB effects suggests that the alerting stimuli and the letter targets may be processed along distinct visual pathways.

Attentional control and competition between episodic representations

Abstract: The relationship between attentional control and episodic representation was investigated in six experiments that employed a variant of the classic attentional blink paradigm. We introduced a task-irrelevant (unpredictive) color match between the first and second target stimulus in a three-stream rapid serial visual presentation task. When this match was present, the first target reliably elicited a priming benefit to the identification of the second, lateralized target. However, this was only the case when the identities of the targets did not belong to the same category (digits, letters, or symbols). When targets did belong to the same category, interference was observed instead of priming, particularly at Lag 1. Furthermore, when color was the target-defining feature, interference at Lag 1 gave way to priming at longer lags. The interference effect is attributed to partial overlap between competing episodic target representations, which affects the availability of their overlapping features for successive attentional selection in rapid serial visual presentation.

Brief Meditation Trainings Improve Performance in the Emotional Attentional Blink

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.