Abstract
When the second of two targets (T2) is presented temporally close (within 500ms) to the first target (T1), accuracy for identifying/detecting T2 is markedly diminished -- an attentional blink (AB). Using Navon letter stimuli, Dale and Arnell (2010) demonstrated that individual differences in dispositional attentional focus (i.e. global or local) were associated with performance on the AB task, such that individuals who focused more on the local level information were more susceptible to the AB. The purpose of the current study was to extend this finding by using three different measures of global/local processing to predict AB performance. In the first global/local task, participants viewed congruent or incongruent Navon letters, and were asked to attend to the local or global level so that global and local interference could be estimated. For the second task, participants viewed incongruent hierarchical shapes (e.g., a square made of triangles), and then made a forced-choice decision about which of two shapes best matched the hierarchical shape. For the third task, participants viewed superimposed faces containing the high spatial frequency information of one individual and the low spatial frequency of another individual. They then indicated which of two intact faces had been presented as the hybrid. Participants also completed a standard AB task. As hypothesized, performance on all three global/local tasks predicted subsequent AB performance, such that individuals with a greater preference for the global (low spatial frequency) information showed a reduced AB. However, a regression analysis revealed that while performance on all three global/local tasks predicted the AB, they all predicted unique variance in AB magnitude. This suggests that if indeed these global/local tasks are measuring some aspect of global/local processing, they are all measuring unique, rather than similar, processes.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2012