The Role Of Working Memory Capacity In The Attentional Blink

Broadbent first found Attentional Blink in 1987. In 1992, Raymond developed RSVP paradigm, and investigated the phenomenon of Attentional Blink experimentally. At present, there are two kinds of theories that can explain the phenomenon of Attentional Blink, one of which is called Interference Model, and the other is called Two Stage Model. And Two Stage Model has a leading status. The concept of Working Memory was first brought forward by Baddeley, which can be divided into three parts: The Central Executive, Phonological Loop, Visuo -Spatial Sketchpad. Working Memory Capacity is the number of items that individuals can recall in a complicated working memory task. The difference of Working Memory Capacity is an important aspect of individual's cognitive difference. Having a better understanding of Working Memory Capacity's influence on the individual's cognition will help us have a better understanding of human's cogniting process. According to Two Stage Model, Working Memory plays an important role in Attentional Blink. It is because T1 stimulus occupied individual's Working Memory that T2 stimulus cannon enter into Working Memory and this process induce that T2 stimulus is interfered by the succedent mask stimulus and T2 stimulus is forgot. That is why the phenomenon of Attentional Blink formed. Some research has discovered that, different types of human have different attentional blink amplitude and range. As far as this question is concerned, there appears to be no unified explanation. This research probes into the role of individual's Working Memory Capacity in Attentional Blink, in order to find whether individuals' Working Memory Capacity has an influence on their score when they accomplished Attention Blink Test. In addition, this research further probes into whether the difficulty of T1 task has an influence on individuals' score when the accomplished Attentional Blink Test. This research has explored that individuals who have large Working-Memory Capacity will have a better score when they perfonn the Attentional Blink Test. On the contrary, individuals who have small Working-Memory Capacity will have a worse score when they perform the Attentional Blink Test. Namely, there's a positive correlation between Working-Memory Capacity and the score of Attentional Blink Test. Meanwhile, this research has also explored that if the difficulty of T1 task is increased, individuals' score of Attentional Blink Test will decrease. This research approved Two Stage Model which was brought forward by Chun and Potter. In the end, this essay summarizes this research and puts forwards some expectation about relative research inorder to have a better explanation of the mechanism of relative research.