Abstract
The attentional blink is revealed in studies of rapid serial visual processing, in which observers view a stream of letters presented sequentially at the same location in a visual display. Reporting the identity of a specially marked letter (the target) amidst distractors causes a transient loss of accuracy for detection of another prespecified symbol (the probe). In two experiments, observers viewed lists of letters, identified a randomly selected letter as a target, and detected the presence of a probe from a different category (a digit or a Greek letter). After several days of training, probe detection following a target had improved markedly. Posttarget probe detection was again impaired when the distractor set included members of the probe set. These results are compatible with an explanation of the attentional blink as an act of suppression aimed at the current set of distractors, but additional mechanisms are needed to account for the effects of training.
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A summary of this research was presented at the May 1994 meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association in Chicago. The research was supported by the Intelligent Systems Cluster of North Dakota State University, a program funded by the state of North Dakota under a grant from the National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). G.P. was supported by the 1993 ND EPSCoR summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and is now attending the University of Minnesota. We thank Ruth Maki, James Neely, and two reviewers for helpful comments on the manuscript.
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Maki, W.S., Padmanabhan, G. Transient suppression of processing during rapid serial visual presentation: Acquired distinctiveness of probes modulates the attentional blink. Psychon Bull Rev 1, 499–504 (1994). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210954
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210954