Topic
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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Dissertation•
28 Jan 2009
01 Jan 2006
06 Apr 2023
TL;DR: This article found that food images would create a greater attentional blink when participants were hungry than when they were sated, but romantic and neutral images would not, which may be explained by the physical distinctiveness of distractors from filler and target images, rather than the emotional valence of the distractors, as previously thought.
Abstract: Hunger is a powerful driver of eating behaviour. However, the relationship between hunger and food-related cognition remains poorly understood. Previous research found that hunger increased the ability of food cues to capture attention in a US student sample (N=23; Piech, Pastorino, & Zald, Appet., 54, p579-582, 2010). We conducted online (N=29) and in-person (N=28) replications of this study with British participants, using the same stimuli sets and protocols as the original study, with a Bayesian analytical approach. The studies use the Emotional Blink of Attention (EBA) task, in which participants must identify a rotated image in a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation. The targets are preceded by distractors – “neutral”, “romantic”, or “food” images. We predicted that food images would create a greater attentional blink when participants were hungry than when they were sated, but romantic and neutral images would not. Our participants completed the task twice, at the same time of day, on two different days, 6-11 days apart; once when hungry (overnight plus 6h fast) and once when sated (after eating a self-selected lunch in the preceding hour). Our results did not support the original finding that hunger increases attentional capture by food cues, despite both of our experiments passing manipulation and quality assurance checks. While the lack of replication of the original finding may result from differences in the sample, responses to stimuli, or other limitations, it is also possible that the original finding may not be generalisable. This may be explained by the sensitivity of the EBA paradigm to the physical distinctiveness of distractors from filler and target images, rather than the emotional valence of the distractors, as previously thought. Our studies were pre-registered on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/w2a8f and https://osf.io/v4wpt).