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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.


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TL;DR: The results of the two experiments indicate that direction of association between targets influences priming in RSVP tasks that use very short but not long SOAs.
Abstract: When two targets are presented using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) and the interval between the targets is 200-500 ms, detection or identification of the second target is impaired. This impairment in second target report is known as the attentional blink (AB). This study sought to examine the impact of the direction of target association on priming during an AB task using very short and long SOAs. Two experiments were conducted using dual-stream RSVP tasks and targets that either shared an associative relationship or were unrelated to one another. The direction of association between the targets was also varied so that associatively related targets were presented in the forward (strongest association from target 1 to target 2) or backward directions of association (strongest association from target 2 to target 1). In Experiment 1 very short SOAs between targets (27-213 ms) were used. Priming was evident at the same SOAs for both targets presented in the backward direction of association. However, for targets presented in the forward direction of association, priming occurred for target 1 and target 2 at different SOAs. Experiment 2 used longer SOAs between targets (107 to 535 ms) and it was determined that while direction of association between the targets did not affect priming, there was a larger priming effect for target 2 than for target 1. The results of the two experiments indicate that direction of association between targets influences priming in RSVP tasks that use very short but not long SOAs. The results are discussed in relation to the two-stage response competition model of Potter et al. (J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 28:1149-1162, 2002).

1 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: This paper used fMRI to measure activation in the occipital and parietal cortices (including V1, V2, and area MT) during an attentional blink task.
Abstract: When two targets are presented in rapid succession, identification of the first target is nearly perfect while identification of the second is severely impaired at shorter inter-target lags, and then gradually improves as lag increases. This second-target deficit is known as the attentional blink (AB). Numerous studies have implicated competition for access to higher-order processing mechanisms as the primary cause of the AB. However, relatively few studies have directly examined how the AB modulates activity in specific brain areas. To this end, we used fMRI to measure activation in the occipital and parietal cortices (including V1, V2, and area MT) during an AB task. Participants were presented with an initial target of oriented line segments embedded in a central stream of letter distractors. This central target was followed 100 - 700 ms later by a peripheral ‘X’ presented at one of four locations along with three ‘+’ distractors. All peripheral items were presented in the centre of a small field of moving dots. Participants made non-speeded judgments about line-segment orientation and the location of the second target at the end of a trial and to ignore all other stimuli. The results showed a robust AB characterised by a linear improvement in second-target accuracy as lag increased. This pattern of behavioural results was mirrored by changes in activation patterns across a number of visual areas indicating robust modulation of brain activity by the AB.

1 citations

01 Jan 2009
TL;DR: The results suggest that, in line with previous findings, making discrimination harder reduces the accuracy of target identification and this model provides a convincing explanation of the pattern of experimental results, in addition to informing questions about the nature and time course of attentional selection.
Abstract: The influence of target discriminability on the time course of attentional selection Srivas Chennu 1 , Patrick Craston 1 , Brad Wyble 2 , Howard Bowman 1 (srivas@gmail.com, patrick@craston.de, bwyble@gmail.com, hb5@kent.ac.uk) 1 Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Abstract A wealth of neurophysiological data has demonstrated that vi- sual attention can selectively enhance target representations early in the visual processing pathway. In addition, be- havioural evidence tells us that the extent to which irrelevant items interfere with target processing depends on their featu- ral similarity to the target. In this context, how does target discriminability influence temporal selection? We present re- sults from an electrophysiology study that addresses this ques- tion by investigating the time course of the neural processes involved in target selection as target distinctiveness is varied. The results suggest that, in line with previous findings, mak- ing discrimination harder reduces the accuracy of target iden- tification. We find that there are significant differences in the perceptual processing of the target in the two conditions, as in- dexed by early visual ERPs and the P3 ERP. We ground this and previous empirical evidence within a theoretical frame- work for understanding the mechanism of attentional selec- tion represented in the ST 2 model, a neural network model of temporal attention and working memory. By simulating both experimental conditions, we show that the model provides a convincing explanation of the pattern of experimental results, in addition to informing questions about the nature and time course of attentional selection. Keywords: Visual Masking; Event-Related Potential; Tempo- ral Selection Introduction The deployment of endogenous attention allows the visual system to selectively enhance the neural representations of task-relevant features in the environment. Our understanding of the neurophysiology of vision in monkeys suggests that focal attention can modulate neural activity very early in the visual processing pathway. Studies of neural firing patterns in spatial selection tasks report correlates of endogenous at- tention in the primary visual cortex, when a salient feature must be discriminated and selectively enhanced in the pres- ence of competing spatial distractors (Reynolds, Chelazzi, & Desimone, 1999). In humans, ERP studies of selective spatial attention have found that stimulus features at attended loca- tions are enhanced as early as 70-80ms after onset (Hillyard & Anllo-Vento, 1998). But how does selective attention op- erate in time? Specifically, when the visual system is rapidly presented with successive fleeting stimuli at an already at- tended spatial location, how quickly can it discriminate a tar- get embedded in a sequence of distractors, and generate a transient attentional enhancement? In this regard, previous behavioural research has found that the extent to which ir- relevant distractors temporally interfere with target process- ing critically depends on how effectively the visual system is configured to distinguish between featural characteristics of targets and distractors (Visser, Bischof, & Di Lollo, 2004). Visser et al. (2004) use two variants of a sequential stim- ulus presentation paradigm, previously used by Ward, Dun- can, and Shapiro (1997) to study the well-known attentional blink phenomenon (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992). In the first variation, referred to in this paper as Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), targets are inserted in a sequen- tial stream of distractors presented at the same spatial loca- tion. In the second variation, referred to as Onset (termed the ‘Skeletal’ task by Ward et al. (1997)), no stream of dis- tractors is used. Instead, targets are briefly presented and are followed by a backward visual mask. Though the attentional blink deficit is found in both variations, the authors find that the presence of distractors nevertheless influences the diffi- culty of target selection. Specifically, making the distractors featurally similar to targets reduces behavioural accuracy of target identification. In this paper, we build upon this finding, and investigate how the time course of target processing is affected by target discriminability. Adapting an experimental paradigm similar to that used by Visser et al. (2004), we record EEG data to provide an index of the temporal dynamics of the underly- ing neural processing evoked by the presentation of a single target. Importantly, we compare the differences in the ERP signatures evoked by targets presented in the above condi- tions, and propose an explanation of these differences within the context of a theoretical framework. To this end, we em- ploy the ST 2 model of temporal attention and working mem- ory (Bowman & Wyble, 2007), which implements a two- stage neural network to model temporal visual processing. The model explains and predicts a broad set of experimental findings encompassing the attentional blink, repetition blind- ness, and RSVP in general. By following through a sequence of theoretically sound changes to the existing model, we en- able it to simulate the Onset paradigm. The modifications are validated by comparing virtual ERP traces generated from the model to human ERP traces. As we shall see, the model pro- vides a convincing explanation of the pattern of experimental results, in addition to informing questions about the cogni- tive equivalence of target processing in masking and RSVP experiments. Target processing in Onset and RSVP We first present the behavioural and electrophysiological re- sults for targets in Onset presentation and targets in RSVP.

1 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202312
202266
202148
202043
201945
201840