Attentional Blink Effect Research Articles

Olfaction modulates cortical arousal independent of perceived odor intensity and pleasantness

Throughout history, various odors have been harnessed to invigorate or relax the mind. The mechanisms underlying odors’ diverse arousal effects remain poorly understood. We conducted five experiments (184 participants) to investigate this issue, using pupillometry, electroencephalography, and the attentional blink paradigm, which exemplifies the limit in attentional capacity. Results demonstrated that exposure to citral, compared to vanillin, enlarged pupil size, reduced resting-state alpha oscillations and alpha network efficiency, augmented beta-gamma oscillations, and enhanced the coordination between parietal alpha and frontal beta-gamma activities. In parallel, it attenuated the attentional blink effect. These effects were observed despite citral and vanillin being comparable in perceived odor intensity, pleasantness, and nasal pungency, and were unlikely driven by semantic biases. Our findings reveal that odors differentially alter the small-worldness of brain network architecture, and thereby brain state and arousal. Furthermore, they establish arousal as a unique dimension in olfactory space, distinct from intensity and pleasantness.

Exploring Binocular Visual Attention by Presenting Rapid Dichoptic and Dioptic Series.

This study addresses an issue in attentional distribution in a binocular visual system using RSVP tasks under Attentional Blink (AB) experimental protocols. In Experiment 1, we employed dichoptic RSVP to verify whether, under interocular competition, attention may be captured by a monocular channel. Experiment 2 was a control experiment, where a monoptic RSVP assessed by both or only one eye determines whether Experiment 1 monocular condition results were due to an allocation of attention to one eye. Experiment 3 was also a control experiment designed to determine whether Experiment 1 results were due to the effect of interocular competition or to a diminished visual contrast. Results from Experiment 1 revealed that dichoptic presentations caused a delay in the type stage of the Wyble's eSTST model, postponing the subsequent tokenization process. The delay in monocular conditions may be further explained by a visual attenuation, due to fusion of target and an empty frame. Experiment 2 evidenced the attentional allocation to monocular channels when forced by eye occlusion. Experiment 3 disclosed that monocular performance in Experiment 1 differs significantly from conditions with interocular competition. While both experiments revealed similar performance in monocular conditions, rivalry conditions exhibit lower detection rates, suggesting that competing stimuli was not responsible for Experiment 1 results. These findings highlight the differences between dichoptic and monoptic presentations of stimuli, particularly on the AB effect, which appears attenuated or absent in dichoptic settings. Furthermore, results suggest that monoptic presentation and binocular fusion stages were a necessary condition for the attentional allocation.

Self-prioritization effect in the attentional blink paradigm: Attention-based or familiarity-based effect?

The self-prioritization effect (SPE) refers to the advantage in processing stimuli associated with oneself. Here, we addressed the SPE in an attentional blink (AB) task. In Experiment 1, shapes associated to you, friend, or stranger served as T1, and letter X as T2. The AB effect was larger for you than the other label conditions, and larger for friend condition than for stranger condition. We suggest that self-associated shape increased its perceptual salience, producing greater attentional capture. In Experiment 2 participants trained with a shape-label matching task to increase familiarity with the shape-label associations before performing the AB task. The difference between friend and stranger conditions disappeared, suggesting that the difference between the two conditions observed in Experiment 1 was mainly due to differences in familiarity or frequency of use. Importantly, the advantage of you over friend and stranger conditions remained, suggesting that the SPE is a genuine effect.

An online browser-based attentional blink replication using visual objects.

The complex relationship between attention and visual perception can be exemplified and investigated through the Attentional Blink. The attentional blink is characterised by impaired attention to the second of two target stimuli, when both occur within 200 - 500ms. The attentional blink has been well studied in experimental lab settings. However, despite the rise of online methods for behavioural research, their suitability for studying the attentional blink has not been fully addressed yet, the main concern being the lack of control and timing variability for stimulus presentation. Here, we investigated the suitability of online testing for studying the attentional blink with visual objects. Our results show a clear attentional blink effect between 200 to 400ms following the distractor including a Lag 1 sparing effect in line with previous research despite significant inter-subject and timing variability. This work demonstrates the suitability of online methods for studying the attentional blink with visual objects, opening new avenues to explore its underlying processes.

Impact of inhibition level on field-dependent and field-independent individuals in attentional blink.

The attentional blink (AB) phenomenon is a cognitive limitation that refers to the failure in identifying the second target if it follows the first one in close temporal proximity (200-500ms). However, more recent studies have demonstrated that AB task performance greatly differs among individuals. This behavioral heterogeneity in AB has promoted research on exploring the predictive value of individual differences. The present study examined how AB magnitudes were related to personal cognitive styles. The Embedded Figures Test was carried out to classify participants' cognitive styles, along with the manipulation of the physical characteristics of distractors in the rapid serial visual presentation paradigm (RSVP) as two levels of inhibition (target-distractor similarity). Results from two experiments of varying difficulty revealed that the AB effect varied between field-dependent (FD) and field-independent (FI) individuals. The AB magnitude in FD individuals was more easily influenced by different inhibition levels of distractors, compared to the FI individuals. Results are interpreted in terms of the contemporary theories of AB that highlighted the inhibitory control over attention.

The Effect of Threatening Stimuli on Attentional Blink

Background: This study aimed to identify the effect of momentary Attentional Blink (AB) in temporarily stressful situations to reveal the relationship between emotion and attention after a traumatic experience. Methods: Participants were 57 college students randomly assigned to either an experimental group (n=30) that watched news videos depicting disasters or a control group (n=27) that did not watch them. This was followed by the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task for both groups. AB appeared when T1 was a news threat stimulus for the experimental and control group; the shorter the presentation interval between T1 and T2, the stronger the AB. On the other hand, when news-neutral stimuli were presented in T1, the AB pattern between the groups changed. The AB pattern appeared regardless of the type of word presented to the control group in T1; however, in the experimental group, the AB pattern appeared only when the news-neutral word was presented in T1. Results: The results suggest that AB appears when T1 is a traumatic stimulus. However, when T1 is a conditioned traumatic stimulus, the AB pattern varies depending on whether the participant watched the disaster video. Conclusions: Our results expand on existing studies by confirming the AB effect in trauma-related neutral stimuli and trauma stimuli.

First target timing influences the attentional blink under low, but not high working memory load.

A growing literature posits attention as a core component of working memory (Baddeley, European Psychologist, 7(2), 85-97, 2002), yet research exploring this relationship is scarce in the temporal attention domain. The present research provided further evidence that the magnitude of the attentional blink (AB) can be influenced by working memory load (WML; Akyürek et al., Memory & Cognition 35, 621-627, 2007). Additionally, we behaviorally tested Akyürek and colleagues' (Psychophysiology, 47(6), 1134-1141, 2010) conclusion that working memory influences attention at an early stage by systematically manipulating the timing of the first target in relation to the stimuli preceding and following it. In two experiments, we demonstrated that the AB effect increases as the temporal interval between the first target and the stimulus following it decreases. Importantly, this effect was observed only when WML was low, indicating that WM influences attending to a second target at an early stage of attentional processing.

A simple model of the attentional blink and its modulation by mental training.

The attentional blink (AB) effect is the reduced probability of reporting a second target (T2) that appears shortly after a first one (T1) within a rapidly presented sequence of distractors. The AB effect has been shown to be reduced following intensive mental training in the form of mindfulness meditation, with a corresponding reduction in T1-evoked P3b brain potentials. However, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unknown. We propose a dynamical-systems model of the AB, in which attentional load is described as the response of a dynamical system to incoming impulse signals. Non-task related mental activity is represented by additive noise modulated by meditation. The model provides a parsimonious computational framework relating behavioral performance, evoked brain potentials and training through the concept of reduced mental noise.

Lexico-semantic Activation of Translation Equivalents During the Attentional Blink.

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the impaired identification of the second target (T2) when presented within approximately 500ms after the first target (T1). Although the AB is eliminated when two targets can be integrated into a single compound word, it remains unclear whether the lexico-semantic organization of translation equivalents modulates the magnitude of the AB. In the present study, we examined consecutive targets' processing in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm using Chinese-English translation equivalents and non-translation equivalents. The results demonstrated that an overall presence of the AB effect was observed when T1 and T2 were non-translation equivalents. However, the AB effect disappeared completely when the two target words were translation equivalents. Taken together, these findings suggest that Chinese-English bilinguals are translating intentionally between Mandarin and English, which facilitates lexical access to word meaning from the two languages at the initial stages of visual word processing. Furthermore, such lexico-semantic activation of translation equivalents attributes to the elimination of the AB.

Mining Temporal Dynamics With Support Vector Machine for Predicting the Neural Fate of Target in Attentional Blink.

Our brains do not mechanically process incoming stimuli; in contrast, the physiological state of the brain preceding stimuli has substantial consequences for subsequent behavior and neural processing. Although previous studies have acknowledged the importance of this top-down process, it was only recently that a growing interest was gained in exploring the underlying neural mechanism quantitatively. By utilizing the attentional blink (AB) effect, this study is aimed to identify the neural mechanism of brain states preceding T2 and predict its behavioral performance. Interarea phase synchronization and its role in prediction were explored using the phase-locking value and support vector machine classifiers. Our results showed that the phase coupling in alpha and beta frequency bands pre-T1 and during the T1–T2 interval could predict the detection of T2 in lag 3 with high accuracy. These findings indicated the important role of brain state before stimuli appear in predicting the behavioral performance in AB, thus, supporting the attention control theories.

A Design of Global Workspace Model with Attention: Simulations of Attentional Blink and Lag-1 Sparing

There are many developed theories and implemented artificial systems in the area of machine consciousness, while none has achieved that. For a possible approach, we are interested in implementing a system by integrating different theories. Along this way, this paper proposes a model based on the global workspace theory and attention mechanism, and providing a fundamental framework for our future work. To examine this model, two experiments are conducted. The first one demonstrates the agent’s ability to shift attention over multiple stimuli, which accounts for the dynamics of conscious content. Another experiment of simulations of attentional blink and lag-1 sparing, which are two well-studied effects in psychology and neuroscience of attention and consciousness, aims to justify the agent’s compatibility with human brains. In summary, the main contributions of this paper are (1) Adaptation of the global workspace framework by separated workspace nodes, reducing unnecessary computation but retaining the potential of global availability; (2) Embedding attention mechanism into the global workspace framework as the competition mechanism for the consciousness access; (3) Proposing a synchronization mechanism in the global workspace for supporting lag-1 sparing effect, retaining the attentional blink effect.

The Decisional Blink? Response criterion and the attentional blink paradigm.

The Attentional Blink (AB) is the impaired detection of a target in a stream of rapidly presented objects (T2) when it follows the presentation of another task-relevant object (T1) by ~200ms. This paradigm has been widely used to measure attentional control in diverse populations (eg, meditators, gamers). AB magnitude is typically assessed by computing the hit rate for T2 following correct T1 identifications. Thus, savvy observers could eliminate their AB by simply reporting that T2 is always present (ie, by employing an extremely liberal response criterion). Here, we use signal detection theory to measure the AB and show that AB magnitude is confounded by response criterion when calculated with hit rate only, the common analytical approach. 39 participants completed 160 test and controls trials of the AB paradigm. Test: participants reported the identity of T1 (a single white letter in a stream of black letters) and detected T2 (an X that was present or absent). Control: T1 was ignored and only the T2 detection judgment was reported. In both trial types, the temporal location of T2 was manipulated (8 Lags, 100-800ms). We replicated the classic AB effect: hit rates were reduced in test compared to control trials, reaching their lowest point at Lag 2. dʹ, which takes hits and false alarms into account, was also significantly reduced in test compared to control trials. Response criterion also differed between test and control trials, replicating the Neyman-Pearson objective. Finally, the degree to which criterion changed between control and test was strongly and negatively correlated with the magnitude of classic AB effect. If one’s goal is to compare the magnitude of the AB between groups or after an experimental intervention in a way that isolates perceptual factors from decisional ones, researchers are urged to abandon the currently widespread analytical approach.

Attentional blink in preverbal infants

Primary cognitive processes, such as spatial attention, are essential to our higher cognitive abilities and develop dramatically in the first year of life. The spatial aspect of infants' working memory is equivalent to that of adults. However, it is unclear whether this is true for the temporal domain. Thus, we investigated the temporal aspect of infants' working memory using an attentionally demanding task by focusing on the attentional blink effect, in which the identification of the second of the two brief targets is impaired when inter-target lags are short. We argue that finding a similar pattern of the attentional blink in preverbal infants and adults indicates that infants can complete the consolidation of the first target into working memory at a similar temporal scale as adults. In this experiment, we presented 7- to 8-month-old infants with rapid serial visual streams at a rate of 100 ms/item, including two female faces as targets, and examined whether they could identify the targets by measuring their preference to novel faces compared to targets. The temporal separation between the two targets was 200 or 800 ms. We found that the infants could identify both targets under the longer lag, but they failed to identify the second target under the shorter lag. The adult experiment using the same temporal separation as in the infant experiment revealed the attentional blink effect. These results suggest that 7- to 8-month-old infants can consolidate two items into working memory by 800 ms but not by 200 ms.

Examining temporal and spatial attention with a reaction time attentional blink

ABSTRACT Spatial distractor processing is impacted by the availability of spatial attention. What is less clear is the extent to which temporal selection alters such spatial selection, when considering response selection. The attentional blink (AB) paradigm is well-suited for studying this question. In this study, we adapted the AB task to measure response times. In Experiment 1, participants identified two targets (T1 and T2), where T2 was presented after T1 at varying lags. Temporal selection is said to select distractors only when T2 is presented within certain lags. Confirming this, an AB effect was found with slower responses to T2 at short lags. To test how temporal selection affects spatial selection in Experiments 2 and 3, response congruent and incongruent flankers were introduced beside T2 to determine if congruency effects change with lag. This was not observed, suggesting that spatial and temporal attention mechanisms may be separable.

Acute stress reduces the emotional attentional blink: Evidence from human electrophysiology.

The present study is the first to examine the time-dependent mechanism of acute stress on emotional attentional blink (EAB) with event-related potential (ERP) measures. We explored the stage characteristics of stress affecting EAB, whether it affects the early selective attention process (marked by early posterior negativity) or the late working memory consolidation (marked by late positive potential). Sixty-one healthy participants were exposed to either a Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or a control condition, and salivary cortisol was measured to reflect the stress effect. ERPs were recorded during an attentional blink (AB) paradigm in which target one (T1) were negative or neutral images. Results showed stress generally reduced AB effects. Specifically, stress promoted the early selective attention process of target two (T2) following a neutral T1 but did not affect T2 consolidation into working memory. Correlational analyses further confirmed the positive effect of cortisol and negative emotional state on AB performance. Moreover, the ERP results of acute stress on AB conformed to the trade-off effect between T1 and T2; that is, stress reduced T1 late working memory consolidation and improved T2 early selective attention process. These findings further demonstrated that stress did not change the central resource limitation of AB. In general, stress generates a dissociable effect on AB early- and late-stage processing; namely, acute stress reduce the AB effect mainly from the improvement of participants' overall ability to select the targets in the early stage.

Dual task interference on early perceptual processing

When two tasks, Task 1 and Task 2, are conducted in close temporal proximity and a separate speeded response is required for each target (T1 and T2), T2 report performance decreases as a function of its temporal proximity to T1. This so-called psychological refractory period (PRP) effect on T2 processing is largely assumed to reflect interference from T1 response selection on T2 response selection. However, interference on early perceptual processing of T2 has been observed in a modified paradigm, which required changes in visual-spatial attention, sensory modality, task modality, and response modality across targets. The goal of the present study was to investigate the possibility of early perceptual interference by systematically and iteratively removing each of these possible non perceptual confounds, in a series of four experiments. To assess T2 visual memory consolidation success, T2 was presented for a varying duration and immediately masked. T2 report accuracy, which was taken as a measure of perceptual—encoding or consolidation—success, decreased across all experimental control conditions as T1–T2 onset proximity increased. We argue that our results, in light of previous studies, show that central processing of a first target, responsible for the classical PRP effect, also interferes with early perceptual processing of a second target. We end with a discussion of broader implications for psychological refractory period and attentional blink effects.

Food is special by itself: Neither valence, arousal, food appeal, nor caloric content modulate the attentional bias induced by food images

When food cues appear in a visual context, such information is likely to influence eating behavior by enhancing attention for food cues. We investigated whether active but task-irrelevant information could modulate the attentional bias for food stimuli using a novel paradigm in which participants were purposely deceived by being enrolled in a memory experiment. A set of images were first held in working memory and then used as task-irrelevant distractors in a subsequent single target rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task, allowing us to investigate the attentional blink (AB) effect elicited by those images. In Experiment 1, the results revealed that food images elicited a larger AB effect than nonfood images. In three follow-up experiments, we investigated whether valence or arousal (Experiment 2), food preparation (Experiment 3), or food caloric content (Experiment 4) were factors related to the attentional bias for food. Overall, our results demonstrated that when held in working memory, food images can easily capture attention, even in circumstances in which the information retained in memory is irrelevant to solve the task, as indicated by the strong correlation found between items that were recognized in the RSVP task and the AB effect. Nonetheless, none of the food-related properties we examined were found to be associated with this attentional bias for food.

Attentional Blink in Pilots and Its Relationship With Flight Performance.

ObjectiveIn flight, military pilots need to monitor changes in the external environment and monitor the situation of the aircraft at the same time. Attentional blink (AB) reflects attentional blindness in time. Therefore, the present study investigated the AB effect in military pilots and its relationship with flight performance.MethodsThirty male military pilots (44.23 ± 4.07 years old) and 29 control participants (44.07 ± 2.93 years old) underwent testing with the classic rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. The participants’ accuracy in detecting a second target stimulus (T2/T1) on the basis of their correctly response to the first target stimulus (T1) was calculated to measure the AB effect. The flight performance of these military pilots was also collected.ResultsThe participants’ accuracy in detecting T2/T1 at positions of 180, 270, 360, and 450 ms was significantly lower than that in detecting T1 in both groups. The military pilots’ detection accuracy of T2/T1 at the positions of 180 ms (p < 0.001) and 270 ms (p < 0.001) was significantly higher than that of the control participants, and their mean detection accuracy of T2/T1 (AB effect) at the positions of 180, 270, 360, and 450 ms was also significantly higher than that of the control participants (p < 0.001). There was a significant correlation between the AB effect and the lowest flight performance score for the military pilots (r = 0.52, p = 0.004), and the regression coefficient was significant (β = 0.514, p = 0.004, R2 = 0.31).ConclusionsBoth groups experienced the AB effect, but the military pilots’ performance regarding the AB effect was better than that of the control participants. The AB effect can predict the lowest flight performance score in military pilots. These findings may have implications for the grounding and selection of Chinese military pilots.

The impact of advertising creativity, warning-based appeals and green dispositions on the attentional effectiveness of environmental advertisements

Accompanying the growing call for ecological sustainability, environmental advertising is playing an increasingly important role in green marketing to foster environmental concern and pro-environmental behavior. The present study examined the impact of two factors on people’s selective attention to green advertisements: advertising creativity (by comparing creative vs. standard advertisements) and appeal type (by comparing warning-based vs. vision-based appeals). The study also investigated the association between advertising effectiveness and individual differences in levels of green dispositions, including environmental concern and value orientation. To explore these issues the study employed a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation paradigm to measure the magnitude of the “attentional blink” arising from people attending to environmental advertisements of varying creativity and appeal type. Findings revealed a significant attentional blink effect for environmental advertising (indicative of heightened selective attention) that was greater for creative advertisements than standard advertisements. A significant association was also found between the magnitude of the attentional blink and dispositional differences in environment-related altruistic value. Results extend previous findings relating to the attentional blink as an index of advertising effectiveness, and shed light on the importance for green marketing of advertising creativity, advertising appeal and environmental value.

Action Real-Time Strategy Gaming Experience Related to Increased Attentional Resources: An Attentional Blink Study.

Action real-time strategy gaming (ARSG) is a cognitively demanding task which requires attention, sensorimotor skills, team cooperation, and strategy-making abilities. A recent study found that ARSG experts had superior visual selective attention (VSA) for detecting the location of a moving object that could appear in one of 24 different peripheral locations (Qiu et al., 2018), suggesting that ARSG experience is related to improvements in the spatial component of VSA. However, the influence of ARSG experience on the temporal component of VSA—the detection of an item among a sequence of items presented consecutively and quickly at a single location—still remains understudied. Using behavioral and electrophysiological measures, this study examined whether ARSG experts had superior temporal VSA performance compared to non-experts in an attentional blink (AB) task, which is typically used to examine temporal VSA. The results showed that the experts outperformed the non-experts in their detection rates of targets. Furthermore, compared to the non-experts, the experts had faster information processing as indicated by earlier P3 peak latencies in an AB period, more attentional resources distributed to targets as indicated by stronger P3 amplitudes, and a more flexible deployment of attentional resources. These findings suggest that experts were less prone to the AB effect. Thus, long-term ARSG experience is related to improvements in temporal VSA. The current findings support the benefit of video gaming experience on the development of VSA.