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Spreading the sparing: against a limited-capacity account of the attentional blink

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Abstract

The identification of the second of two targets presented in close succession is often impaired—a phenomenon referred to as the attentional blink. Extending earlier work (Di Lollo, Kawahara, Ghorashi, and Enns, in Psychological Research 69:191–200, 2005), the present study shows that increasing the number of targets in the stream can lead to remarkable improvements as long as there are no intervening distractors. In addition, items may even recover from an already induced blink whenever they are preceded by another target. It is shown that limited memory resources contribute to overall performance, but independent of the attentional blink. The findings argue against a limited-capacity account of the blink and suggest a strong role for attentional control processes that may be overzealously applied.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cognitive Psychology, Vrije Universiteit, Van der Boechorststr 1, 1081 BT, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Christian N. L. Olivers & Stefan van der Stigchel

  2. Hull University, Hull, UK

    Johan Hulleman

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  1. Christian N. L. Olivers
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  2. Stefan van der Stigchel
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  3. Johan Hulleman
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Correspondence to Christian N. L. Olivers.

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Olivers, C.N.L., van der Stigchel, S. & Hulleman, J. Spreading the sparing: against a limited-capacity account of the attentional blink. Psychological Research 71, 126–139 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-005-0029-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-005-0029-z

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