■The roles of location specificity and
masking mechanisms in the attentional blink.
■Beyond the attentional blink: Visual masking by object
substitution.
■Illusory conjunctions inside and outside the focus of
attention.
■Priming from the attentional
blink: A failure to extract visual tokens but not visual types.
■Unconscious perception: Attention, awareness, and control.
The roles of location specificity and masking mechanisms in the attentional blink.
Breitmeyer, Bruno G.; Ehrenstein, Addie; Pritchard, Kelly;
Hiscock, Merrill; Crisan, Jill
Perception & Psychophysics.
1999 Jul Vol 61(5) 798-809
Explored the roles of location specificity and masking mechanisms in the attentional blink (AB) in 66 19-52 yr olds. In a series of 4 experiments using rapid serial visual presentations of 2 target letters embedded in numeral distractors, with different numbers of display positions and with or without masking, the authors show that (1) the nonmonotonic, U-shaped AB function, which occurs when all items are presented at the same display location, is eliminated in favor of a monotonic function when targets and distractors are presented randomly dispersed over 4 or 9 adjacent positions; (2) the AB monotonicity is maintained with the spatially distributed presentation even when backward masks are used in all possible stimulus positions and when the location of the next item in sequence is predictable; and (3) the U-shaped AB is not due to position-specific forward or backward masking effect occurring at early levels of visual processing. It was tentatively concluded that the U-shaped AB is primarily a function of the interruption of late visual processing produced when the item following the 1st target occurs at the same location.
Beyond the attentional blink: Visual masking by object substitution.
Giesbrecht, Barry; Di Lollo, Vincent
Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance. 1998 Oct Vol 24(5)
1454-1466
If 2 targets are to be identified among distractors displayed in rapid sequence, correct identification of the 1st target hinders identification of the 2nd. To obtain this attentional blink (AB), the 1st target must be masked with a simultaneous (integration) or a delayed (interruption) mask indifferently. In 3 experiments, it was shown that the 2nd target must also be masked, but that the precise form of masking is important. An AB occurs with interruption but not with integration masking. This nonequivalence of masking paradigms parallels that found in studies of masked priming, a phenomenon arguably related to the AB. The results are explained by a revised 2-stage model (M. M. Chun & M. C. Potter, 1995).
Illusory conjunctions inside and outside the focus of attention.
Cohen, Asher; Ivry, Richard
Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance. 1989 Nov Vol 15(4)
650-663
This article addresses 2 questions that arise from the finding (e.g., W. Prinzmetal et al; see record 1986-26854-001) that visual scenes are first parsed into visual features: (a) the accumulation of location information about objects during their recognition and (b) the mechanism for the binding of the visual features. The first 2 experiments demonstrated that when 2 colored letters were presented outside the initial focus of attention, illusory conjunctions between the color of one letter and the shape of the other were formed only if the letters were less than 1|| apart. Separation greater than 2|| resulted in fewer conjunction errors than expected by chance. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that inside the spread of attention, illusory connections between the 2 letters can occur regardless of the distance between them. In addition, these experiments demonstrated that the span of attention can expand or shrink like a spotlight. The results suggest that features inside the focus of attention are integrated by an expandable focal attention mechanism that conjoins all features that appear inside its focus. Visual features outside the focus of attention may be registered with coarse location information prior to their integration. Alternatively, a quick and imprecise shift of attention to the periphery may lead to illusory conjunctions among adjacent stimuli.
Priming from the attentional blink: A failure to extract visual tokens but not visual types.
Shapiro, Kimron; Driver, Jon; Ward, Robert; Sorensen, Robyn
E.
Psychological Science. 1997 Mar Vol 8(2) 95-100
When people must detect several targets in a rapid stream of successive visual events at the same location, detection of an initial target induces misses for subsequent targets within a brief period. This attentional blink may serve to prevent interruption of ongoing target processing by temporarily suppressing vision for subsequent stimuli. In 2 experiments, the authors examined the level at which the internal blink operates, specifically, whether it prevents early visual processing or prevents quite substantial processing from reaching awareness. In Exp 1, 10 university students (aged 18-24 yrs) monitored a brief stream of alphanumeric characters, and then reported on the identities of 3 specified targets in the stream. Exp 2 examined the semantic priming from word targets that were missed during the blink in 10 17-24 yr old students. Results demonstrate that attentional gating within the blink operates only after substantial stimulus processing has already taken place. The results are discussed in terms of 2 forms of visual representation, types and tokens.
Unconscious perception: Attention, awareness, and control.
Debner, James A.; Jacoby, Larry L.
Journal
of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition. 1994 Mar Vol 20(2)
304-317
Conscious perception is substantially overestimated when standard measurement techniques are used. That overestimation has contributed to the controversial nature of studies of unconscious perception. A process-dissociation procedure (L. L. Jacoby; see record 1992-07943-001) was used for separately estimating the contribution of conscious and unconscious perception to performance of a stem-completion task. Unambiguous evidence for unconscious perception was obtained in 4 experiments. In Exp 1, decreasing the duration of a briefly presented word diminished the contribution of both conscious and unconscious perception. In Exps 2-4, dividing attention reduced the contribution of conscious perception while leaving that of unconscious perception unchanged. Discussion focuses on the measurement of awareness and the relation between perception and memory.