Essays on the power of the human mind, Vol 2.

1803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Reid
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind

A Quick Visual Mind Can be a Slow Auditory Mind

2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander Martens ◽  
Addie Johnson ◽  
Martje Bolle ◽  
Jelmer Borst
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Blink ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Visual Modality ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Conscious Level ◽  
Visual Targets ◽  
Concurrent Information

The human mind is severely limited in processing concurrent information at a conscious level of awareness. These temporal restrictions are clearly reflected in the attentional blink (AB), a deficit in reporting the second of two targets when it occurs 200–500 ms after the first. However, we recently reported that some individuals do not show a visual AB, and presented psychophysiological evidence that target processing differs between “blinkers” and “nonblinkers”. Here, we present evidence that visual nonblinkers do show an auditory AB, which suggests that a major source of attentional restriction as reflected in the AB is likely to be modality-specific. In Experiment 3, we show that when the difficulty in identifying visual targets is increased, nonblinkers continue to show little or no visual AB, suggesting that the presence of an AB in the auditory but not in the visual modality is not due to a difference in task difficulty.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document