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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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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is suggested that adults with ADHD can use automatic (reflexive) attention to detect items in close temporal proximity in the RSVP stream, but have difficulty allocating controlled attention to multiple stimuli separated by several hundred milliseconds.
Abstract: In two experiments, we examined the ability of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to process multiple targets appearing in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream. Using a standard attentional blink (AB) task, subjects were required to both identify a target in the RSVP stream and detect a probe appearing in one of several posttarget serial positions. In Experiment 1, ADHD adults exhibited a protracted AB compared to controls, in that their probe detection did not improve as a function of increasing probe-to-target intervals (450–720 msec). In Experiment 2, the ADHD group performed as well as controls in detecting probes appearing immediately (i.e., 90 msec) after the target. Taken together, the results demonstrate that adults with ADHD exhibit a selective deficit in rapidly shifting attention between the target and the probe, when the two appear several hundred milliseconds apart. These results suggest that adults with ADHD can use automatic (reflexive) attention to detect items in close temporal proximity in the RSVP stream, but have difficulty allocating controlled attention to multiple stimuli separated by several hundred milliseconds.

63 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown that attentional modulation appears substantially earlier in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) than in an anatomically connected lower visual area, the middle temporal area, which satisfies a critical prediction of the hypothesis that LIP is a source of top-down attentional signals to early visual cortex.
Abstract: In the visual system, spatial attention enhances sensory responses to stimuli at attended locations relative to unattended locations. Which brain structures direct the locus of attention, and how is attentional modulation delivered to structures in the visual system? We trained monkeys on an attention-switch task designed to precisely measure the onset of attentional modulation during rapid shifts of spatial attention. Here we show that attentional modulation appears substantially earlier in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) than in an anatomically connected lower visual area, the middle temporal area. This temporal sequence of attentional latencies demonstrates that endogenous changes of state can occur in higher visual areas before lower visual areas and satisfies a critical prediction of the hypothesis that LIP is a source of top-down attentional signals to early visual cortex.

62 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Evidence is provided that cross-modality AB can be found under conditions that do not allow useful preparatory task-set switching and the ABs observed for crossmodality visual T2s showed the characteristic U-shaped pattern often found in AB experiments in which two visual targets are used.
Abstract: When two masked targets (T1 and T2), both requiring attention, are presented within half a second of each other, report of the second target is poor, demonstrating an attentional blink (AB). Potter, Chun, Banks, and Muckenhoupt (1998) argued that all previous demonstrations of an AB occurring when one or more targets were presented outside the visual modality did not represent true AB but were, instead, artifactual, resulting from switching of task set. In the present experiments, T1 and T2 modalities were independent and varied randomly from trial to trial, allowing no useful preparatory task-set switching from T1 to T2. However, reliable ABs were observed when both targets were visual, when both targets were auditory, and cross-modally when T2s were visual. Furthermore, the ABs observed for crossmodality visual T2s showed the characteristic U-shaped pattern often found in AB experiments in which two visual targets are used—a pattern that should not be observed under task-set switching conditions. These results provide evidence that cross-modality AB can be found under conditions that do not allow useful preparatory task-set switching.

62 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Functional magnetic resonance imaging is used to measure regional variations of temporal sensitivity along the human ventral visual stream to quantify neural response properties that are likely to be operational during natural vision and that provide putative neurofunctional substrates of mechanisms relevant in several psychophysical phenomena as masking and the attentional blink.
Abstract: Both our environment and our behavior contain many spatiotemporal regularities. Preferential and differential tuning of neural populations to these regularities can be demonstrated by assessing rate dependence of neural responses evoked during continuous periodic stimulation. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure regional variations of temporal sensitivity along the human ventral visual stream. By alternating one face and one house stimulus, we combined sufficient low-level signal modulation with changes in semantic meaning and could therefore drive all tiers of visual cortex strongly enough to assess rate dependence. We found several dissociations between early visual cortex and middle- and higher-tier regions. First, there was a progressive slowing down of stimulation rates yielding peak responses along the ventral visual stream. This finding shows the width of temporal integration windows to increase at higher hierarchical levels. Next, for fixed rates, early but not higher visual cortex responses additionally depended on the length of stimulus exposure, which may indicate increased persistence of responses to short stimuli at higher hierarchical levels. Finally, attention, which was recruited by an incidental task, interacted with stimulation rate and shifted tuning peaks toward lower frequencies. Together, these findings quantify neural response properties that are likely to be operational during natural vision and that provide putative neurofunctional substrates of mechanisms that are relevant in several psychophysical phenomena as masking and the attentional blink. Moreover, they illustrate temporal constraints for translating the deployment of attention into enhanced neural responses and thereby account for lower limits of attentional dwell time.

62 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown that Objects that do not enter consciousness can nevertheless have a neural signature that is indistinguishable from perceptually rich representations that occur for objects that do enter into conscious awareness, as shown through multivariate classification analyses of electroencephalogram data.
Abstract: The visual system has the remarkable ability to integrate fragmentary visual input into a perceptually organized collection of surfaces and objects, a process we refer to as perceptual integration. Despite a long tradition of perception research, it is not known whether access to consciousness is required to complete perceptual integration. To investigate this question, we manipulated access to consciousness using the attentional blink. We show that, behaviorally, the attentional blink impairs conscious decisions about the presence of integrated surface structure from fragmented input. However, despite conscious access being impaired, the ability to decode the presence of integrated percepts remains intact, as shown through multivariate classification analyses of electroencephalogram (EEG) data. In contrast, when disrupting perception through masking, decisions about integrated percepts and decoding of integrated percepts are impaired in tandem, while leaving feedforward representations intact. Together, these data show that access consciousness and perceptual integration can be dissociated.

62 citations


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