Abstract
Last two decades, there was a controversy whether AB (attentional blink) exists across two modalities, vision and hearing (e.g., Arnell & Jolicoeur, 1999; Hein, Parr, & Duncan, 2006). Existing models for AB and recent research suggest executive function may play a role in producing AB (e.g., Akyurek, Hommel & Joliceour, 2007; Olivers & Meeters, 2008; Arnell, Stokes, MacLean, & Gicante, 2010). This study investigated if working memory use could induce cross-modal AB. Throughout all the two experiments, a conventional paradigm which has not yielded any evident cross-modal AB (Potter, Chun, Banks & Muckenhoupt, 1998) was employed. As the cross-modal AB task, participants had to find a T1 digit (sound) and T2 digit (vision) in two simultaneous streams of rapidly presented Korean letters. In Experiment 1, participants in one group solely performed the cross-modal AB task whereas the other group was requested to memorize a set of English alphabets before the AB task. It was demonstrated that working memory maintenance did not produce the lag effect of the cross-modal AB. Experiment 2 administered either maintenance or executive function of working memory with two groups of participants. Participants in both groups memorized a set of digits and performed the cross-modal AB task with speeded response. The task for the executive working memory group was newly introduced from Akyurek, Hommel and Joliceour's experiment (2007). Participants in the executive working memory group had to compare the digits in working memory with a T1 digit they heard and speedily respond whether the T1 digit matches one of the memory set digits. As a result, the cross-modal AB was induced only by the use of executive working memory with reduced T2|T1 accuracy in lag 2 and 3. The results indicate central executive function is crucial in inducing AB between the two modalities.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016