Abstract
The Attentional Blink (AB) paradigm demonstrates that when instructed to detect two targets presented in a rapid visual stimulus stream of distracters, the second target (T2) is often undetected if presented 200–500ms post onset of the first target (T1). Unlike conventional AB tasks, which present stream items with constant inter stimulus intervals (ISI), we present both distracter and target items with randomly varying ISI values, thus allowing a novel temporal onset for each stream item. Our results reveal an absence of an AB, presumably induced by the series of novel temporal transient events. We suggest that processes underlying “attentional capture” may allow the information processing system to operate at a level immune to the dual-task deficits reflected by the AB. Our results and conclusions are discussed within the framework of limited resources capacity models of the AB.