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.

Attention meets emotion : temporal unfolding of attentional processes to emotionally relevant information

Abstract: We investigated the interplay of the perception of emotion and the allocation of attentional resources. We contrasted predictions taken from basic emotion theories and appraisal theories, and hypothesized that emotionally relevant information attracts attention, thus biasing perception. We used the modulation of the attentional blink and psychophysical methods, and examined the perception of static, and dynamic, fearful, happy and neutral facial expressions. We showed that the time course of the AB can be decomposed into several periods, each of which is differentially sensitive to emotion-laden information. In a paradigm designed to measure the minimum display duration necessary to make a correct gender decision on emotion-laden faces, we showed that, on average and across all emotions, participants need the face to be displayed for 50 msec, and that they make significantly less mistake when the face is fearful or happy. Results emphasise the importance of inter-individual differences.

Neuroplasticity of Attention. How Brain Stimulation and Mental Fatigue Affect Attentional Performance

Abstract: Attention allows us to focus on what is relevant and to ignore what is not. While we call upon attention at every waking moment, it is not static: we cannot sustain attention indefinitely, and often fall prey to distractions. This PhD thesis is a study of the short-term neuroplasticity of attentional processes: how susceptible is attention to change, and what processes in the brain (neuro-) give rise to changes in attention (-plasticity)? In Chapters 2–5, I examined whether attention can be improved with electrical stimulation of the brain, in the form of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). Previous studies that attempted to use tDCS to enhance attention have yielded promising, but inconsistent results (reviewed in Chapter 2). My attempt to enhance spatial attention with tDCS (Chapter 3) was unsuccessful, as stimulation of the frontal eye fields did not lead to changes in eye movements. Applying tDCS over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex also did not enhance temporal attention (Chapters 4 and 5), as participants’ performance on an attentional blink task remained unchanged. In Chapter 6, I investigated the opposite effect: decreases in attention, when attention has to be sustained for a long time. Using EEG, I tracked whether similar decreases occurred in different attention-related signals in the brain. tDCS may one day be used to counteract these declines, or to relieve other deficits in attention. However, barring a deeper understanding of the technique and more large-scale studies of its efficacy, such practical applications of tDCS are not yet feasible.

Capturing and Unmasking the Mask in the Auditory Attentional Blink

Abstract: Key to our understanding of the temporal limits of attention as reflected in the attentional blink (AB) - the failure to report the second of two targets (T1 and T2) presented in close succession - is the detrimental impact of posttarget distractors, accounted for typically by the construct of masking. Within the context of the auditory AB, we tested the notion of masking by seeking to perceptually ''capture'' the T2 + 1 distractor away from the target-containing sequence to examine whether perceptual organizational factors could, instead, explain the action of T2 + 1. Using monaural sequences of tones, the presentation of T2 + 1 contralaterally to the rest of the sounds produced the AB. However, the AB was abolished when that contralateral T2 + 1 was perceptually grouped with an induction sequence of irrelevant tones presented to the contralateral ear. Such findings are consistent with a selection-based approach to the AB that emphasizes failure of inhibition and misselection while suggesting a diminished role for masking.

The effect of observer's set on the processing of temporally distributed items1,2

Abstract: Perception of the second of two rapidly presented targets is impaired when the temporal lag between them is short (attentional blink, AB) Previous studies showed two types of AB functions One is that the performance for the second target has been found to be most impaired at the shortest lag (Lag 1), that is, when the second target appeared directly after the first target The other is that the performance was not impaired at Lag 1 (Lag 1 sparing) The present study examined whether the task set of observers determines the occurrence of Lag 1 sparing The experiment revealed that Lag 1 sparing occurred only when the observers were informed of the relationships of target locations The present results extend the explanation of Lag 1 sparing by attentional gating (Visser, Zuvic, Bischof, & Di Lollo, 1999b) and suggest that this gating system is not stimulus-driven but subject to goal-directed control

Real world familiarity does not reduce susceptibility to emotional disruption of perception: evidence from two temporal attention tasks

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.