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Top-down control is not lost in the attentional blink: evidence from intact endogenous cuing

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Abstract

The attentional blink (AB) refers to the finding that performance on the second of two targets (T1 and T2) is impaired when the targets are presented at a target onset asynchrony (TOA) of less than 500 ms. One account of the AB assumes that the processing load of T1 leads to a loss of top-down control over stimulus selection. The present study tested this account by examining whether an endogenous spatial cue that indicates the location of a following T2 can facilitate T2 report even when the cue and T2 occur within the time window of the AB. Results from three experiments showed that endogenous cuing had a significant effect on T2 report, both during and outside of the AB; this cuing effect was modulated by both the cue-target onset asynchrony and by cue validity, while it was invariant to the AB. These results suggest that top-down control over target selection is not lost during the AB.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China (30470569, 60435010, and 30770712). We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the earlier versions of the paper. Electronic mail concerning this study should be addressed to Dr. Xiaolin Zhou (xz104@pku.edu.cn).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Dexuan Zhang, Liping Shao & Xiaolin Zhou

  2. Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Zhejiang, 310036, China

    Dexuan Zhang

  3. Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Mark Nieuwenstein

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  1. Dexuan Zhang
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  2. Liping Shao
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  3. Mark Nieuwenstein
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  4. Xiaolin Zhou
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Correspondence to Xiaolin Zhou.

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Zhang, D., Shao, L., Nieuwenstein, M. et al. Top-down control is not lost in the attentional blink: evidence from intact endogenous cuing. Exp Brain Res 185, 287–295 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1153-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-1153-3

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