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.

Associative priming by targets and distractors during rapid serial visual presentation: does word meaning survive the attentional blink?

Abstract: In 5 experiments, 432 college students viewed lists of words containing 2 targets (Target 1 [T1] and Target 2 [T2]) presented by rapid serial visual presentation at 10 words per second Identification of T1 caused a 500-ms impairment in the identification of T2 (the attentional blink [AB]) Improved recall of T2 was observed throughout the time course of the AB when T2 was a strong associate of either T1 or a priming distractor (PD) When participants ignored T1, the AB was eliminated, but the amount of priming was not affected Priming of T2 by PD was temporary (100-200 ms after the onset of PD) Although target priming and distractor priming both survived the AB, the 2 forms of priming appeared to have different bases In contrast to priming by PD, priming by T1 was larger, modulated by backward associative strength, and longer lasting Priming and the AB are hypothesized to result from on-line attentional processes, but recall from RSVP lists is also influenced by off-line memory processes

Tracking the allocation of attention using human pupillary oscillations.

Abstract: The muscles that control the pupil are richly innervated by the autonomic nervous system. While there are central pathways that drive pupil dilations in relation to arousal, there is no anatomical evidence that cortical centers involved with visual selective attention innervate the pupil. In this study, we show that such connections must exist. Specifically, we demonstrate a novel Pupil Frequency Tagging (PFT) method, where oscillatory changes in stimulus brightness over time are mirrored by pupil constrictions and dilations. We find that the luminance induced pupil oscillations are enhanced when covert attention is directed to the flicker stimulus and when targets are correctly detected in an attentional tracking task. These results suggest that the amplitudes of pupil responses closely follow the allocation of focal visual attention and the encoding of stimuli. PFT provides a new opportunity to study top down visual attention itself as well as identifying the pathways and mechanisms that support this unexpected phenomenon.

Theta phase synchrony and conscious target perception: Impact of intensive mental training

Abstract: The information processing capacity of the human mind is limited, as is evidenced by the attentional blink-a deficit in identifying the second of two targets (T1 and T2) presented in close succession. This deficit is thought to result from an overinvestment of limited resources in T1 processing. We previously reported that intensive mental training in a style of meditation aimed at reducing elaborate object processing, reduced brain resource allocation to T1, and improved T2 accuracy [Slagter, H. A., Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Francis, A. D., Nieuwenhuis, S., Davis, J., et al. Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. PloS Biology,5, e138, 2007]. Here we report EEG spectral analyses to examine the possibility that this reduction in elaborate T1 processing rendered the system more available to process new target information, as indexed by T2-locked phase variability. Intensive mental training was associated with decreased cross-trial variability in the phase of oscillatory theta activity after successfully detected T2s, in particular, for those individuals who showed the greatest reduction in brain resource allocation to T1. These data implicate theta phase locking in conscious target perception, and suggest that after mental training the cognitive system is more rapidly available to process new target information. Mental training was not associated with changes in the amplitude of T2-induced responses or oscillatory activity before task onset. In combination, these findings illustrate the usefulness of systematic mental training in the study of the human mind by revealing the neural mechanisms that enable the brain to successfully represent target information.

Capturing and holding attention: The impact of emotional words in rapid serial visual presentation

Abstract: When two masked, to-be-attended targets are presented within approximately 500 msec of each other, accurate report of the second target (T2) suffers more than when targets are presented farther apart in time—an attentional blink (AB). In the present study, the AB was found to be larger when taboo words were presented as a first target (T1), as compared with the AB found when emotionally neutral, negative, or positive words were presented as T1, suggesting that taboo words received preferential attentional processing. Comparable results were also obtained when taboo words were presented as to-be-ignored distractors in single-target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). Arousal, but not valence, ratings of the emotional words predicted accuracy on subsequent targets in both dual- and single-task RSVP. Recognition memory for taboo words accounted fully for the negative relationships between arousal ratings and accuracy on subsequent targets, suggesting that arousal-triggered changes in attentional allocation influenced encoding of taboo words at the time they were encountered.