Revisiting the spread of sparing in attentional blink: Attentional selection or resource limitation?

Abstract

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the deficit in reporting the second of two targets (T₂) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream when this target is presented in less than 500 ms after the onset of the first one (T₁). It is under debate whether the AB originates from a limitation of cognitive resources or a distractor-triggered attentional suppression. In this study, we put a distractor (D_inter) or an extra target (T_inter) between T₁ and T₂ while at the same time manipulated the time interval between D_inter (T_inter) and T₂ (0, 200, 500 ms). The level of transient attentional enhancement induced by the detection of T₁ was also manipulated by adding external noise to T₁. Results showed that, compared with the dual-target condition, T₂ performance was better in the consecutive-target condition when T₂ was close in time (0 ms) to T_inter or D_inter (i.e., the spread of sparing), but was worse when the interval between T₂ and the preceding item was longer. Adding external noise to T₁ improved T₂ performance when T₂ was close in time to the preceding item, irrespective of whether this item was D_inter or T_inter. These findings are better interpreted with an extended resource account according to which AB occurs due to the limitation of attentional resources but a chunking process can be utilized to improve target performance.

Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2013