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.

Is the Diminished Attentional Blink for Salient T2 Stimuli Driven by a Response Bias

Abstract: The attentional blink (AB) effect refers to the finding that the second of two quickly presented masked targets (T1 and T2) is less likely to be identified when the temporal lag between the targets is short than when it is long (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). Interestingly, the AB effect is diminished for salient T2 stimuli. The common explanation is that salient stimuli are processed more efficiently than other stimuli. A contrasting hypothesis is that it is due to a bias to report such stimuli. Recently, Tibboel, Van Bockstaele, and De Houwer (2011) introduced a signal detection method that allowed them to reject the response bias explanation for the effect of arousing words on the AB. Presently, we used the same method to examine the diminished AB for participants’ own names (Experiment 1) and stimuli that form a coherent category (Experiment 2). Both experiments confirmed that the effect of these stimuli on the AB reflects more efficient processing rather than a response bias.

Fleeting Perceptual Experience and the Possibility of Recalling Without Seeing.

Abstract: We explore an intensely debated problem in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy: the degree to which the “phenomenological consciousness” of the experience of a stimulus is separable from the “access consciousness” of its reportability. Specifically, it has been proposed that these two measures are dissociated from one another in one, or both directions. However, even if it was agreed that reportability and experience were doubly dissociated, the limits of dissociation logic mean we would not be able to conclusively separate the cognitive processes underlying the two. We take advantage of computational modelling and recent advances in state-trace analysis to assess this dissociation in an attentional/experiential blink paradigm. These advances in state-trace analysis make use of Bayesian statistics to quantify the evidence for and against a dissociation. Further evidence is obtained by linking our finding to a prominent model of the attentional blink – the Simultaneous Type/Serial Token model. Our results show evidence for a dissociation between experience and reportability, whereby participants appear able to encode stimuli into working memory with little, if any, conscious experience of them. This raises the possibility of a phenomenon that might be called sight-blind recall, which we discuss in the context of the current experience/reportability debate.

Conscious perception and the modulatory role of dopamine: no effect of the dopamine D2 agonist cabergoline on visual masking, the attentional blink, and probabilistic discrimination

Abstract: Conscious perception is thought to depend on global amplification of sensory input. In recent years, striatal dopamine has been proposed to be involved in gating information and conscious access, due to its modulatory influence on thalamocortical connectivity. Since much of the evidence that implicates striatal dopamine is correlational, we conducted a double-blind crossover pharmacological study in which we administered cabergoline—a dopamine D2 agonist—and placebo to 30 healthy participants. Under both conditions, we subjected participants to several well-established experimental conscious-perception paradigms, such as backward masking and the attentional blink task. We found no evidence in support of an effect of cabergoline on conscious perception: key behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) findings associated with each of these tasks were unaffected by cabergoline. Our results cast doubt on a causal role for dopamine in visual perception. It remains an open possibility that dopamine has causal effects in other tasks, perhaps where perceptual uncertainty is more prominent.

An investigation of individual differences in diffusion of attention and the attentional blink

Abstract: When identifying two targets in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), accuracy on the second target is reduced if presented shortly after the first target -an attentional blink (AB). Some individuals appear to be immune to the AB, whereas others are variously susceptible to this effect. Recent studies suggest that when a broadened or diffused attentional state is induced, the AB can be attenuated. Therefore, in the current study, individual differences in diffusion of attention and processing speed as assessed by a variety of cognitive tasks (e.g., global/local task) were examined in order to determine whether these differences could predict AB magnitude. Performance on the global/local task predicted AB magnitude in a manner suggesting that dispositional diffusion of attention reduces the AB, however measures of processing speed predicted target accuracy, but not AB magnitude, providing evidence for the dissociability of these measures. Finally, performance on other tasks thought to provide indices of diffusion did not relate to performance on the AB task, as was the case for measures of personality and affect that were expected to relate to diffusion of attention and hence to the AB. Results are discussed in terms of the need for a more finely honed account of the construct of diffusion.