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.

Towards global principles of brain processing

Abstract: A set of principles are developed to explain how general information processing is carried out in the brain. These involve sub-cortical sites to help create specific control structures to achieve active responses to inputs and to develop memory systems for more effective responses to the environment. Consciousness and thinking are regarded as top-level processes created by suitable attentionally driven brain structures which are identified mainly in posterior and anterior sites respectively. In particular a specific neural model, the CODAM model, is developed to explain consciousness. Experimental evidence for the principles and their neural adumbrations are briefly surveyed.

Contributions of the Right Prefrontal and Parietal Cortices to the Attentional Blink: A tDCS Study

Abstract: The AB refers to the performance impairment that occurs when visual selective attention is overloaded through the very rapid succession of two targets (T1 and T2) among distractors by using the rapid serial visual presentation task (RSVP). Under these conditions, performance is typically impaired when T2 is presented within 200–500 ms from T1 (AB). Based on neuroimaging studies suggesting a role of top-down attention and working memory brain hubs in the AB, here we potentiated via anodal or sham tDCS the activity of the right DLPFC (F4) and of the right PPC (P4) during an AB task. The findings showed that anodal tDCS over the F4 and over P4 had similar effects on the AB. Importantly, potentiating the activity of the right frontoparietal network via anodal tDCS only benefitted poor performers, reducing the AB, whereas in good performers it accentuated the AB. The contribution of the present findings is twofold: it shows both top-down and bottom-up contributions of the right frontoparietal network in the AB, and it indicates that there is an optimal level of excitability of this network, resulting from the individual level of activation and the intensity of current stimulation.

Attentional blink in adults with Tourette syndrome

Abstract: An attentional blink (AB) paradigm was used to assess the ability of Tourette syndrome (TS) participants to detect and correctly identify two red target letters (T1 and T2) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task. An AB was demonstrated for both patients and controls; identification of the second target (T2) was impaired when it appeared within 200 – 500 ms of the first (T1). Interestingly, there was no difference between the groups in AB duration or magnitude. While there was a trend for reduced T2 identification in the TS group, this was not significant. Analysis of pre-target and post-target intrusion errors for T2 identification (as a function of T1-T2 interval) was conducted and, once again, no significant group differences were demonstrated. These results are indicative of a relative preservation of selective attention in TS.

Is pop-out visual search attentive or preattentive? Yes!

Abstract: Is the efficiency of "pop-out" visual search impaired when attention is preempted by another task? This question has been raised in earlier experiments but has not received a satisfactory answer. To constrain the availability of attention, those experiments employed an attentional blink (AB) paradigm in which report of the second of 2 targets (T2) is impaired when it is presented shortly after the first (T1). In those experiments, T2 was a pop-out search display that remained on view until response. The main finding was that search efficiency, as indexed by the slope of the search function, was not impaired during the period of the AB. With such long displays, however, the search could be postponed until T1 had been processed, thus allowing the task to be performed with full attention. That pitfall was avoided in the present Experiment 1 by presenting the search array either until response (thus allowing a postponement strategy) or very briefly (making that strategy ineffectual). Level of performance was impaired during the period of the AB, but search efficiency was unimpaired even when the display was brief. Experiment 2 showed that visual search is indeed postponed during the period of the AB, when the array remains on view until response. These findings reveal the action of at least 2 separable mechanisms, indexed by level and efficiency of pop-out search, which are affected in different ways by the availability of attention. The Guided Search 4.0 model can account for the results in both level and efficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved). Language: en