Neural decoding of semantic processing during the attentional blink

Reporting the second of two targets is impaired when these appear in close succession, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). Despite decades of research, what mechanisms are affected by the AB remains unclear. Specifically, two central issues remain open: Does the AB disrupt attentional processes or reflect a structural limitation in working memory encoding? Does it disrupt perceptual processing or only post-perceptual processes? We address these questions by reviewing event-related potentials (ERP) studies of the AB. The findings reveal that the core influence of the AB is by disrupting attentional engagement (indexed by N2pc). As a consequence, while early processing (indexed by P1\N1) is spared, semantic processing (indexed by N400) and working memory (WM) encoding (indexed by P3b) are compromised: minor disruptions to attentional engagement weaken but do not eliminate semantic processing, whereas they prevent encoding in WM. Thus, semantic processing can survive the blink, whereas encoding in WM does not. To accommodate these conclusions, we suggest a Disrupted Engagement and Perception (DEaP) account of the attentional blink.

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Electrophysiological evidence for modulation of semantic processing during the attentional blink

Journal of Vision ◽

10.1167/6.6.1015 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 6 (6) ◽

pp. 1015-1015 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

B. Giesbrecht ◽

J. Sy

Keyword(s):

Attentional Blink ◽

Semantic Processing ◽

Electrophysiological Evidence

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Semantic Processing, But Not Semantic Inhibition, Produces the Enhanced Attentional Blink for Emotional First Targets

PsycEXTRA Dataset ◽

10.1037/e527312012-751 ◽

2008 ◽

Author(s):

Karen M. Arnell ◽

Katie Walters ◽

Lauren Sanders ◽

Chris Rudyk

Keyword(s):

Attentional Blink ◽

Semantic Processing ◽

Semantic Inhibition

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Gatecrashing the visual cocktail party: How visual and semantic similarity modulate the own name benefit in the attentional blink

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1177/1747021818778694 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 72 (5) ◽

pp. 1102-1111

Author(s):

Kevin Dent ◽

Geoff G. Cole

Keyword(s):

Attentional Blink ◽

Visual Processing ◽

Semantic Processing ◽

Semantic Information ◽

Cocktail Party ◽

Cocktail Party Effect ◽

White Target ◽

A Minor ◽

Own Name ◽

Late Selection

The “visual cocktail party effect” refers to superior report of a participant’s own name, under conditions of inattention. An early selection account suggests this advantage stems from enhanced visual processing. A late selection account suggests the advantage occurs when semantic information allowing identification as one’s own name is retrieved. In the context of inattentional blindness (IB), Mack and Rock showed that the advantage does not generalise to a minor modification of a participant’s own name, despite extensive visual similarity, supporting the late selection account. This study applied the name modification manipulation in the context of the attentional blink (AB). Participants were presented with rapid streams of names and identified a white target name, while also reporting the presence of one of two possible probes. The probe names appeared either close (the third item following the target: Lag 3) or far in time from the target (the eighth item following the target: Lag 8). The results revealed a robust AB; reports of the probe were reduced at Lag 3 relative to Lag 8. The AB was also greatly reduced for the own name compared to another name—a visual cocktail party effect. In contrast to the findings of Mack and Rock for IB, the reduced AB extended to the modified own name. The results suggest different loci for the visual cocktail party effect in the AB (word recognition) compared to IB (semantic processing).

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A Quick Visual Mind Can be a Slow Auditory Mind

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169.56.1.33 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 33-40 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

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.

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